Doctors, when did a patient's lie nearly end up eliminating them? - (r/AskReddit)

our slash ass credit doctors when did the patients lie nearly end up killing them middle-aged housewife comes to edy with episodes of headache and collapse vacant episodes usually early hours of the morning has the full workup with CT scans and lumbar punctures several times always negative it took several attendances before anyone asked her about recreational drugs she was an unassuming suburban mom turns out she was into cocaine in a big way leading to reversible cerebral vasoconstriction no more cocaine equals no more headaches and known Aston consequences luckily paramedic here one common one is when older guys are having chest pain and we want to give them nitro glycerine paste pills to help the chest pain one thing that doesn't mix well as nitro and vinegar it causes a blood pressure drop that can be really dangerous we always ask them to make it really clear that if we give the nitro when they are taking the orgrim and similar meds that they could die it usually takes three or four warnings in a row before the guy will admit it early on I made the mistake of trusting a guy after just a couple mentions of how dangerous it would be I sprayed the nitro under his tongue and he said as generic velcro count duct at one point his BP wasn't even registering on the Box calf it was bad I thought I was going to get screamed at by my doctor but he just laughed and said it was so common that he wasn't upset and gave me a couple ideas on how to make it clear how dangerous it was to the patient not a doctor but I was in via once separated from another patient by only a thin curtain it was impossible to not overhear what was going on she was an elderly woman who had taken an ambulance and due to feeling faint and said she had no other symptoms ours are going by she gets up to use the washroom a couple times and make small talk with her brother sounding pretty woozy the whole time doctors keep checking on her they draw blood and check her blood pressure I think it was like remarkably low but they aren't sure why cut to several hours later when a nurse notices there's some blood on the woman's bed after some back-and-forth she finally admits that she had been bleeding profusely from her rectum for weeks the doctors gave her a hard time but got her out off there real fast I work in outpatient surgical center lying to anesthesia can be really dangerous I've had a person lie about not taking drugs and then react badly when given the anesthesia meds because they interacted fortunately for that patient not nearly dying but I will forever have it ingrained in my head the anesthetist leaning over their head screaming what drugs did you take Anna to that I fortunately haven't-- seemed serious event but definitely has happened to our providers and I've seen more mild versions people eating drinking before the anesthesia and then denying larkey from my patients they just have puked after waking up so we know they had it but made it okay the danger is you can poop during sedation and then get it in your lungs called aspirating and die from that could be really bad but fortunately I personally haven't seen the worst yet but I've heard plenty of stories on it not a doctor but my sister's Godfather was diabetic he went to the because he had a really bad cold for like two weeks he went in and they asked him if he was a diabetic and for some reason he said no long story short they gave him something that made his sugar levels go up and he went into a coma he died about a month later because his organs shut down edit he was only 32 years old just in case anyone was wondering I wasn't the lead on this case but I was the assist when I was in dental school his patient came in and was really hyped up my buddy asked him if he has been on any drugs and the guy just said he had a lot of caffeine okay we move forward from what my friend told me his blood pressure was high but not too high for an elective procedure part of the local numbing we give patients has epinephrine in it and sometimes this gets into the bloodstream with certain types of nerve blocks not uncommon however if you've snorted a couple lines of cocaine and then get EP in your bloodstream that's no bueno ended up calling the ambulance his BP was so high he was at risk for a stroke so yeah even stuff the dentist does can kill you if you lie one of my relatives had a bad reaction to amoxicillin as a child puffy face trouble breathing emergency room visit bad fast-forward 15 years she's off at college and has come down with some sort of infection she however didn't inform the campus health people because and I quote allergies are caused by a bad diet and since I'm a vegetarian I shouldn't have them anymore yep they prescribed her amoxicillin and if it weren't for her roommate being home to call an ambulance she'd have been dead I work in an STD clinic so the stuff I deal with isn't usually deadly or at least not immediately deadly however I am constantly surprised by the percentage of patients who test positive and refused to tell their partners a guy came in a few years ago who saw something relatively simple like gonorrhea but seemed to have trouble walking long story short in us called an ambulance for him and sent him to the affor a spinal tap turns out an ex-boyfriend refused to tell him about his syphilis diagnosis after they had a rough breakup like 15 20 years earlier so not only was our guy possibly spreading syphilis unknowingly he now had untreatable neurosyphilis he worked with our disease intervention specialists to track down as many partners as they could but I think he died from related complications like a year after his initial visit when patients lie and say they haven't eaten anything prior to elective surgery when they have I caught a patient's NAFA Lingus gets at her partner had brought in for her because we are so cruel to deny her food people can die from aspirating stomach contents during a GA not a doctor but her Army Combat Medic we were in a small firefight under a and a soldier was hit in the leg it was very easy to see the wound because of the desert camo doesn't blend in well with blood the part that almost killed him is he never told us that he was hit in the chest we asked him and he said only in the leg I knew he was lying because he was holding his chest too but I didn't want to make a bad situation even worse so I didn't say anything but when we asked him again and he said no I didn't want him to die of course so I pulled his plate carrier off and we did more medical on him he definitely would have died from that wound it punctured his lung and he was having trouble breathing we called for a medevac and he lived but with only one lung never knew it he joined the aar game but I assumed he stayed out paramedic here when you do drugs don't lie about it don't leave [ __ ] out were asking cause they can have adverse effects with other meds and it might kill you we had a patient that took l'homme heart meds religiously even in the hospital when we were also administering then to her she was educated to not take any of her home it's while she is hospitalized since were giving her the hospital meds she would sneak and take them her blood pressure bottomed out and would have to bolus her security was cooled and had to remove the meds from her and lock them up we had another patient requested a sleep med the nurse gave it to her later found patient barely arousal and blood pressure dropped which did not make sense she was given a low dose off sleep aid patient had her purse open on the bed and found a prescription of ambien the patient took our sleep aid Plus double dose of her homemade ambien we always instruct patients on admission not to take their home it's while in the hospital we are not allowed to go through their belongings due to privacy edit grammar my well step uncle brother of my stepfather never met him though lied about being in pain 6 so he could stay home from school and miss a test kept upping the ante so they'd believe him apparently his parents were pretty strict and he was terrified to admit he'd lied long story short they took him to the hospital he was diagnosed with appendicitis and they straight up cut him open the test was looking pretty good at that point when we do our a pre-op check before a surgery our office prints out a list of meds we have in file that the patient is taking we tell them please look at this list and sign it to indicate this is the current and up-to-date list of the meds you take patient signed and we plan for surgery next week get a call from anesthesia of the day before her scheduled surgery apparently she forgot to mention she had started taking a weight loss drug that if you're taking it can cause severe hip when you go under anesthesia and in extreme cases you can die from that you have to have stopped the drug for at least four days to be safe to have anesthesia so her surgery got pushed back a week not canceled just pushed back enough to be safe she call our office fuming and demanding a refund for the time she took off work seriously lady sorry but we have a signed document saying you told us all your meds exactly who should be mad at her you put asset liability and now the surgeon our office doesn't get paid for that day when we could have subbed in someone else in that slot I COO nurse here everyone who drinks pretty much lies about how much it's almost standard to assume the amount they say is half follow the truth if not less two beers every day you say we will assume that six and once you for withdrawal kind of the same with cigarette smoking but the difference in car of a pack-a-day smoker or half pack isn't as important as it is with alcohol I was admitting patients and a psychiatric ward busy night and I was way behind an old a man with schizoaffective disorder is admitted with a caretaker a nurse asks them a few questions including if the patient has taken any medicine and/or narcotics the caretaker says no I see the patient four hours later he seems delirious which often is caused by a somatic problem including medicine you know where this is going he can't maintain eye contact and can only sit in his chair and talk nonsense he drools and yells every word but somehow seems very tired I asked the caretaker if the patient has taken any medication and she says the patient broke into a medicine room at the institution he lives and just started eating random pills apparently this is somewhere around 80 pills not being more precise because she did not bother gathering the empty pill boxes the only information I could get was that he definitely ate over 40 lithium pills which is just great if you really hate your kidneys now after calling the emergency department to quickly Pratt and an ambulance with an anesthesiologist for transport I talked with the caretaker through my teeth just slightly apparently the nurse wouldn't understand because it wasn't his own medicine and she didn't want to make a fuss I screamed into my pillow that night in pure frustration I later found out he lived after intensive care and almost loosing his kidney function had a grandma who was basically comatose status in ER whenever we could rouse her or get a word she stated she wasn't on any drugs we Yolo gave her narcan narcotic odd drug with no effect 20-30 minutes later we do form a zonal roam as a con benzo up drug and she wakes up a lot of ppl went suspecting her off drug OD given her age and statement so they were thinking 900 different routes my cousin is an a doctor and sees this quite a bit mostly people lying about having done drugs and underage drinking because they don't want to get in trouble not understanding that the doctors are less concerned with that than they are making sure the person lives one particular incident the person had drunk quite a bit and done several kinds of drugs but wouldn't admit to it and came in alone so there was no one to verify what had happened because this person wouldn't admit to the drugs they'd take him and thus wouldn't tell the docs what they had taken they had no way to help and could do little except watch as this person slowly died from the drug and alcohol interactions because without knowing what was already in their system giving them anything could have only sped up the process the person was a minor and passed away from massive organ failure because they were more worried about getting in trouble than saving their own life until it was far too late to admit the truth here's a ducked up family story we had an 81 year old frail grandmother brought in by family for failure to thrive in the setting of incurable stage IV colon cancer being cared for at home patient was admitted awakened conversational poor historian complaining of pain she proceeded to gradually get sicker shut down like she was dying becoming gradually nonverbal unresponsive and dropping vitals she was the N R so we did supportive care and looked for causes such as UT s BP sepsis liver failure etc the family was around the whole time acting very involved and caring 36 hours later she gradually started coming out if it before recovering back to baseline it turns out she was given her home dose of morphine and the prior to admission which was 100 milligrams extended-release morphine twice daily as she had been complaining of pain her family had failed to mention that they'd been diverting all her pain medications that nearly got their grandmother killed as we had no reason to suspect an opiate as the cause that reminded me to always consider opiates we discharged her to a long-term care facility not a doctor but my dad's a paramedic he's told me plenty of times about when patients have told him they've taken his drugs when they've been doing illegal drugs to avoid getting into trouble and he's administered drugs which just make it 10x worse because of the combination of them and he can't do anything else other than just take them to the hospital if they're still breathing I was a L&D RN my co-worker had a patient show up in labor she was six centimeters I was helping get the room set up for delivery and the patient's mom started to ask her so does that mean the baby and the patient violently xuxa's her her doctor wasn't on that night and that office didn't have electronic records we could access at night so we're just going about prepping for this delivery when her doctor happened to come into the nurse's station because she had to come and foreign medical patients on another unit she just stopped by to chat but noticed that patient on the board and asks oh so her baby actually flipped turns out the kid had been breech all pregnancy and was still breech she didn't want a c-section so she figured she'd just try to come and so far dilated that she could just deliver that would have been okay if she was Frank breech but down since it wasn't her first baby but she was food cling breech crossed legs with feet down that's dangerous as hell because it's super easy for the umbilical cord to come out first instead of the baby which cuts off baby's oxygen my fourth was head down and this ended up happening to me anyway emergency c-section in less than 10 minutes her baby was so lucky her water hadn't broken especially if she'd been at home still she still kept refusing the c-section and my coworker finally snapped we had another patient who was in for a stillbirth and had a lot of family down in our waiting room trying to process what had happened my coworker asks if her patient had noticed all the crying people at the end of the hall as they were mourning their dead baby and would she rather have a c-section or deal with the grief that family had she finally got the stupid c-section my coworker caught a lot of flack for checking that patient and not noticing she wasn't feeling a head the most frequent one is that they don't need a specific antibiotic or other life-saving drug because it is really just too expensive for them to afford the fault is mostly with the drug companies they find out they are the only ones making a specific drug and they raise the price just because they can then the insurance stops covering it and the doctors may not learn any of this until the pharmacy is start calling his office to get the drug changed to something else but there is no telling how many people die all suffer serious health problems because of the drug and insurance companies greed a lot of people get less than ideal treatment simply because of these middlemen trying to get their cut vet her so in my case it is is the owner telling the lie that can kill the patient it is hard to get the point across to people that I am NOT going to call the cops if you tell me your dog ate your drug stash just telling me will save time lots of money spent on diagnostics and possibly your pets life I really don't care if you do drugs the only scenarios I can't think of where I would call the authorities would have to involve deliberately harming an animal or extreme neglect that I know will continue in the future social worker at a Children's Hospital we have kids coming in through our resuscitation room that have been seizing and are unconscious with no prior history I'm constantly trying to get parents to tell me if there is a possibility that their toddler might have ingested something does your kid have access to cannabis could they have eaten some parents never want to admit it to doctors and so I'm always on a fact-finding mission as the social worker parents are either glad I'm there or they think I'm going to take their kids away sar cannabis can affect children in horrible shutdown your ability to breathe kind off ways nurse on an ortho unit this particular patient was a fresh post-op joint-replacement they woke up in the middle of the night going batshit crazy he was insisting he had to leave he was seeing things we were on the sixth floor and he tried going down the back stairwell there was no reasoning with this dude he was straight up and determined to leave turns out he was detoxing from alcohol he had lied to both his doctor and the nurse that admitted him about his alcohol use when your heavy user likely was quitting cold turkey can kill you we were lucky he didn't start seizing before we got meds on board to help him detox safely I was very thankful I caught him trying to get down the stairs before he went ass over teakettle and cracked his head open a few months later he was back on the surgery schedule to fix an injury on his operative leg from falling luckily his doc knew to plan for detox this time around but the patient also planned ahead after he was discharged we found a bottle of booze in the bedside table I'm not a doctor but a patient with a couple of really weird disorders that cause doctors who aren't familiar with them to think I am taking I have been denied very needed basic treatment like a bag of saline because my dehydration is exasperating my symptoms because they think I'm somehow gaming the system these assumptions that patients are lying do a lot of harm to you made it to the end you're ducking Beast I'll cut you a deal smash like and subscribe for more curated content might it's free and that's a great price

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Id: dtHJIDWqy4Q

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 27 2019