Medical Professionals Share The Dumbest Ways They’ve Seen People Self-Treat A Medical Condition
People have always relied on herbal teas, essential oils, and other home remedies to make their headaches and colds go away quicker. But with the spread of the internet, many think they can attack even their bigger health problems. Why pay a doctor if you can just google your symptoms and watch a YouTube video for a diagnosis?
Well, because dumb practices can harm you more than they can help. To illustrate this point, let's take a look at a Reddit thread where medical professionals describe the worst attempts of self-treatment they've ever seen. We're talking about individuals who use "sonic emitters" for cancer and pour bleach into their genitals. Continue scrolling to check out their stories.
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I had a patient come to the ER complaining of severe pain and swelling "all down there." On physical examination we noted a really remarkable amount of swelling, and both the internal and external tissues were extremely red and irritated. She was so swollen she couldn't even pee until we put a catheter in. The physician did a pelvic exam and found blisters on her cervix.
We asked when the symptoms started. She said, "Well it was itching tonight. I thought I had a yeast infection, so I poured a cup of bleach up in there to kill it. But then after a while it kind of started to hurt." Yeah, I bet it did.
**tl;dr** - Do not pour bleach into your vagina.
General practitioner, medical researcher, and founder of PrimeHealth Clinical Research, Iris Gorfinkel, M.D., told Bored Panda that there's a limit to what we can know about ourselves without any help from others.
"People are generally good at recognizing when they're cold. They put on a coat. When they're too hot, they take it off," Gorfinkel said. "They know when they need to urinate and when they need to defecate. For the most part, we're pretty good at understanding when we're thirsty."
But if we go beyond these things, our judgment starts to deteriorate quite fast. "People are not as good at recognizing when they're genuinely hungry, when they're tired, and when they're stressed," the doctor said.
This brings us to what's actually hard for people to recognize and treat. "Discomfort, pain, putting off pleasure, deciphering complex emotions (especially the negative ones). These are extremely hard for people to do and to do well."
911 dispatch here. Heard the story second hand, but kid had a crazy high fever and wouldn't stop crying. paramedics get on scene... and mom is squeezing a lemon while rubbing it all over the baby's forehead because it's "supposed to keep the fever down". Mom was completely at a loss as to why the baby wouldn't stop crying either. it couldn't possibly be the lemon juice you've essentially been squeezing into it's eyes for the last 20 minutes. no siree.
I worked at an OB/GYN clinic for 7 years. One day a girl called and said she had a broken shot glass up her vagina. Upon asking how it got there, she said she was using it as birth control. Thankfully it worked because no one that stupid should have children.
Despite the chances of unnecessary anxiety and finding incorrect, or even potentially harmful information, Americans frequently use the internet to find medical diagnoses.
According to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of adult internet users in the United States said they looked online for health information in the previous year.
53% of online diagnosers talked with a medical professional about what they found online, and 46% did not.
As an Emt- Basic student I responded to a man who called 911 complaining of a insect crawling up his ear. Upon arrival we ask what ear the bug crawled into, he says his right ear, but keeps complaining about burning coming from his left ear. We noticed his wife standing next to him holding a bottle of insect spray, upon further questioning we come to find out she sprayed insecticide into his left ear thinking it would "flush" the insect out of his right ear. I had to explain to her that our ear canals are separated by our brain.
Evidently some people’s ears aren’t separated by the presence of a brain.
Paramedic here. Got called to a house about 11:30 one night for a "girl with finger nail polish in her eyes". Got there and the scene is a s**t show, people screaming and throwing things around. We immediately notice the mother holding down a younger girl and about to pour something in her eyes.
Nail. Polish. Remover.
Shouldn't people who choose to reproduce attempt to learn how not to harm their young? Like, crack a book, ask Google, take a first aid class?
"Many of these things [we Google], we're born knowing how to do," Gorfinkel said. "But life strips away permission to be at peace with yourself."
According to her, in order to combat this, we have to start with the education system. "People are exceptionally bad at living with emotions that we're told are negative. Guilt, anger, a sense of being humiliated and embarrassed. We (especially women) are repeatedly told these are bad emotions to have when in fact, they're critical to true well-being." Having a firm inner base, everything else, including our relationships with illnesses and doctors, is much easier to handle.
"If I'm not able to label those emotions [and] understand their origins, then I am unable to act on them. That's a serious problem. [And] where does it lead? Into a helpless space. The backbone of anxiety. Helplessness is the very bedfellow of depression. To get out of that space, the basic labeling of difficult emotions and how to manage them should, in fact, be taught in schools."
"I hope the mathematicians out there forgive me. But all that trigonometry, cosine, and tangent... I mean, yes, they have their place but what's universally important in our lives are relationships," the doctor continued.
"We should [know more] about relationships, people, the stages of love, and what it represents. These things really need to be taught [in schools]."
I'm a triage RN. Had a patient call concerning back pain. I was going about my normal assessment and asked if he had taken anything for the pain, to which he replies "Cobra Venom".
Turns out, he had read about Cobroxin, a topical treatment for pain made from cobra venom, and decided it would be more effective to simply let a cobra bite him. I have no idea how he got hold of a cobra.
Late to the party... Guy comes into the clinic with a boil the size of golf ball on his face. He begins to explain that he had a painful zit, and tried to lance it with a needle and when that failed, he stepped it up to a "micro drill" which he sanitized by wiping on his jeans. The nurse stopped him mid story and asked "So you took a drill to your own FACE, and want to know why it's sore and swollen?"
I was the patient.
Had a frequent flyer patient who had psoriasis so bad that he literally had huge scales all over his legs. One day he gets admitted and the scales are gone. He tells me he took a brillo pad (steel wool) and scraped them all off. Surprisingly it works with no adverse effects and he's still scale free a year later.
Oftentimes, it's not only the internet that we trust too much. "Multivitamins together with minerals are taken by huge numbers of people. It is a tremendously big business that promises a lot of things, including mood boosts, healthy bones and teeth, proper muscle function, and this and that, but let's take a look at the truth. Do they do anything?"
The doctor said that these products don't live up to their promises. "The US National Institute of Health has poured two and a half billion dollars into studying them, only to learn that they do not make people live longer, they do not slow cognitive decline, they do not reduce the chance of heart disease, cancer or diabetes ... Now omega three fatty acids, that's still up for questioning. A gram a day may be helpful for lowering blood pressure."
Gorfinkel also doesn't think that probiotics belong to primetime. "The gut is literally made up of trillions of bacteria, funguses, and viruses that live there," and taking some of them in a form of a pill won't magically fix their entire environment.
"There is no existing test that tells us exactly what a healthy gut microbiome is. Nor is there a test that reliably determines which microbes are missing ... and to make matters worse, the studies done on probiotics have repeatedly shown that what's advertised on the label does not even accurately predict what is in the capsule."
But with that being said, Gorfinkel is still waiting for upcoming research on the subject, which is being done as we speak.
We are a needle exchange/harm reduction station at at the clinic I work at. We have IV drug users come in pretty frequently to get their abscesses cleaned out and dressed properly. So one patient comes in wanting to get her abscess cleaned out like many other patients before her. We take her back to a procedure room and get everything ready to start. She has an ace bandage covering up this spot on her arm so of course we are thinking it's fine because that's better than just letting it be open to the air. She proceeds take off said bandage and exposes not only HUGE abscess but a FOUR INCH LENGTH OF VEIN sticking out of her arm that is rotting away and drying up. We are like, "uh what's going on here?" and she says she took it out of her abscess and left it out because it made injecting heroin easier. So basically she ran her own IV with a vein she cut out of her abscess. We then called the ambulance.
tl;dr- Woman came in with abscess, turned out she cut her whole vein out to make an IV for easier heroin injection.
I worked overnights in a midwestern ER and I have seen 2 men try to treat their erectile dysfunction on their own.
One man used caulk in his urethra and then it dried and cracked like pencil lead and only the 1/4 inch at the tip came out, he had another 3 inches or so all broken into pieces that required surgery to get out.
The other man used a clipped off piece of coat-hanger to try to keep himself erect during sex and that also had to be surgically removed.
Dudes is weird. Ask for Viagra.
Animal Attendant for a vet clinic here.
A client came in and had rubber banded their 2 dogs ball sacks as a way of neutering them. VERY VERY VERY BAD. They got the idea from how sheep and goats can be neutered, but there is a HUGE difference between the junk of a sheep and a chihuahua. Both of the dogs had a severe infection and the tissue was completely dead. The treatment for this cost wayyyy more than the neuters would've been.
DO NOT DO THIS EVER EVER.
An 8 year old tripped on the cord of a deep fryer, spilling hot grease on his shoulder and arm. His grandma slathered him in butter to "cool him off" and "draw the heat out". When my medic partner and I entered the house and started assessing the boy, I was saddened and hungry at the same time. The poor kid smelled absolutely delicious. No cannibal.
A friend of mine did the same thing at a party, covering his right pants leg with boiling hot oil. Everybody starts freaking out, even more so because the friend wasn't in any distress. They think he's in shock or something. People calmed down when they learned he has a prosthetic leg.
Amidst all the horror of this thread, this comment made me laugh 😆
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For anyone who doesn't know, you should NEVER put butter on burns! It can actually seal in the heat and make the burn worse. Cold, running water is the best option.
Yes yes. Cold water helps with wonders on burns
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As a kid, I once had to have a shoulder mole biopsied. The biopsy ended up quite deep/extensive, but I was only given a local, so I was awake. The doc cauterized the area. It smelled so much like the Mexican dish carnitas (pork) that I haven’t been able to eat it since. And my family is Mexican! XD
I heard this back in my own medical field before i left, that sometimes when they got burned patients, they couldn't help but think of how good they smelled sometimes, this included grease-burned patients too, Talking with one of my Drs {i get sick a lot so some friends are my Drs and we talk} They said it reminds them that humans are a type of animal and just might be coded to eating each other in a way, but our intelligent stops it, only when there's no food /hope will we fiddle with that idea that we will do it {we got on this topic because of my pica, which at some points include my own hands, but I'm way better now}
Pica is an intense disease/disability. I have cared folks with this disorder. Good for you that you're doing better! Also I'm glad you shared this story, pica, like some other conditions are easily dismissed by people who haven't experienced them first hand!
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Lmao @ "no cannibal" But butter is an absolute old school treatment. As in, there was a time it was suggested in reference books
I remember it was recommended home treatment. I had lots of salty butter put on various burns.
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That happened when my parents worked at McDonald’s. A guy got fryer oil all over his hand. He put his hand in water for a few hours. He made it out completely fine. Same thing happened to a girl with poutine sauce, while she was trying to unclog the sauce dispenser. A whole layer of skin came off with the sauce.
The last one of my I know how that feels having had been burnt. And had have skin graphs cause it burnt all my skin off 35% of my body. Poor lady. I'm glad the guy was okay even though I can't believe he didn't get his skin burnt off. He one lucky guy.
Load More Replies... Once I got a tree burn and my dad told me to put oil or butter on it. I did. It made it sting really bad. I'll never do anything like that again. I think he just told me that cause he thought it be funny. Cause he laughed at me when I did it and and I waved my arms around trying to get air on them cause it hurt. Should of not listened but I was just listening cause he was my dad and I thought he knew what he was thinking about. It hurt.
My next door neighbours growing up were Italian and they sometimes used butter for burns, but more often vinegar, which was even worse! They also used vinegar on bee stings.
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Oh, that’s so old fashioned. I was taught that when I was little and I was 4 and burned my hand in about 1968. Thank goodness they stopped that. It hurt so much more.
That's a horrible old school "treatment" that was what they did fifty years ago. You get a burn use only cold running water! When I was very small they used to rub you with "rubbing" alcohol (isopropyl alcohol) when you had a fever because allegedly the evaporation cooled you off. It took a long time for doctors to realize that you actually absorbed the alcohol and it could poison you.
I understand the grandma's intention, but, after suffering a 3rd degree boiling water burn on my abdomen when a stockpot handle broke while I was pouring out chicken stock splashing the scalding liquid on me, I learned that ALUMINUM FOIL placed over the burn will draw out the heat and help the burn to heal faster. Not that I didn't feel foolish using this treatment, but, within a few days, my burn was healing quickly and i don't have a scar. My experience is not what I'd suggest to everyone, especially a child with oil burns, but it worked well for me.
Speaking of grandma medicine: when I was 4 I wandered off and ended up playing with electrical cords. Got a heckuva shock, blew out the fuses. How about grandma stuck a light bulb in my mouth like Uncle Fester, it flickered, and then and only then did she think “okay this might be serious”! She rubbed me down with cocoa butter and gave me a tight hug and I was alright.
Granny: “It’s okay baby lemme just put some salve on it.” *grabs a stick of butter* 🤣🤣🤣😭
I accidentally discovered that when I burned myself on a pan on the stove, I grabbed the Icy Hot roll on and put it. On the burned area. To my surprise and happiness, the burning stopped and the area healed with no blister and no scar. I am pretty sure it is the menthol in the stuff that stopped it from being painful and blistering. I just kept applying it for the rest of the day. I use it all the time now for any burn I get. Works wonders every time.
Poor baby! Butter is an old wives tale, it doesn't work!!!
One time when I was around 8ish, my brothers and my step brother(on my dad's side) were at my Mom's house working on one of their cars. They were in their late teens/early 20s, and didn't know what they were doing. My step brother ended up getting sprayed with hot liquid/steam, and it burned his arm and part of his face pretty bad. They ran inside and my Mom told them to call my stepmother and take him to the ER. But, when they called my stepmom, she told them just to bring him home so she could check his burns. Ignoring my Mom's advice, the boys and I all piled up in the car and drove over to my Dad's house. When we get there, my stepmom decided that the burns weren't serious enough to go to the hospital (but they definitely were) and that she could treat him at home. Did she apply soothing/healing creams, or even aloe you ask? Nope. Mustard. The yellow kind. So not only did he have burns that took months to heal, he was also stained yellow. 🤦♀️
The kicker was that my stepmother was an RN. She should have known better, but she was far from the brightest. I'm glad that I was never one of her patients. 😅
Load More Replies... Yes, that "remedy" was something my mother (born in Puerto Rico in the 1920s) had been taught to do as a child. So when my sister burnt her hand with hot grease, it got buttered. But, it didn't work so my parents brought my sister to the ER. If we'd been able to afford health insurance at the time, I'm sure the ER would have been the first remedy...
I want to know how the hell the kid managed to TRIP over the fryer cord, was he on the work surface or was the fryer on the floor ? Answers please x
I was 4 in 1969 and my parents were out of town for a funeral and my aunt was watching us four kids. I was making some rubbery spiders (the kind you put on someone's sandwich to scare them). Back then, damn to hell with safety! I poured the liquid into the bug shaped pan and put it in the heater. A small toaster sized box that cooked the goo. After, i forgot to unplug and when cleaning up, I wrapped both hands around basically an iron. I still cringe. My aunts remedy was the same, butter. I remember crying so hard from the pain that I passed out and my older sister called my mom. Off to the er and cold cold water.
I grew up with the “Old Country” version of putting butter on a burn…
Med student. A guy came in to the emergency department with two combs and a toothbrush in his butt. He had stuck the toothbrush up there for pleasure, but lost it. He tried to fish it out with a comb, but lost that, and tried again with a second comb, and lost that as well.
The kicker: he was there because he had gotten in a car crash. He wasn't there to get the stuff out of his butt. He volunteered the information after we asked if there was anything else we needed to know.
Doctors: Is there anything else we need to know? Guy: Yeah. So I have two combs and a toothbrush stuck in my butt...You know...I fell on it. After the car crash.
Paramedic here:
Responded to a nursing home for diabetic patient, unresponsive.
The nurse didn't keep up with the insulin and gave a tad bit too much, decreasing the pt's blood sugar. Ok, this is fixable. I walk in to see another nurse pouring Splenda down this lady's mouth.
She has snoring restorations and the Splenda is just being inhaled into her lungs. It also isn't doing s**t for this poor lady because it isn't f*****g sugar.
After give this lady some D50 (IV sugar water) she came to, but felt like she couldn't get enough air.
She ended up being treated for a few days for pneumonia.
I swear, some people get their medical licenses from the bottom of a Cracker Jack box.
Love you.
EDIT: I had a few Redditors ask me if the nurse was a Registered Nurse (RN) or Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). This lady was an LPN. License to Practice Nursing I think. I don't know. That's my correction. And I still love you all.
I saw this patient last year. He had a long history of abdominal pain that was quite non-specific, and his previous workups were negative. He was convinced that he had intestinal parasites that caused the pain (which as an aside, he believed that he got them after an "encounter" with a woman he met on the internet).
So despite having seen several physicians and gastroenterologists, and numerous investigations including gastroscopy and colonoscopy, no diagnostic source for the pain was found. But he was undeterred from believing it was intestinal parasites.
So he develops a plan in which he orders surgical instruments and local anesthetic online. Watches YouTube to figure out how to perform a laparotomy (to get into his abdomen). And so after his preparations, he performs a self-surgery using a video camera to watch himself, and manages to get into his abdominal cavity. He had trouble completing his self-surgery and called an ambulance.
I would check him for psychological illnesses, I don't know the name but there is one that makes people feel insects crawling under their skin
I had a patient treating her lung cancer with a "sonic emitter". Her argument was that sound waves can shatter glass, so lung cancer wouldn't stand a chance.
Here is one that my friend who was a EMT told me.
He and his partner got called out for a impailment injury to a child's eye while running with a pencil. The mother removed the pencil before they arrived. The mother was riding in the back. That's when the paramedic said to the mother. "Next time something gets impailed, don't remove it. It's dangerous!" Without skipping a beat the mom goes "oops, I didn't know that." Then she proceeds to quickly and calmly shove the pencil back in. Apparently it was an eventful evening. Edit: corrected the ducking autocorrect on my icrap.
That cannot be true. No way. I refuse to believe this is true. Nope nope nope.
GP here.
The most outrageous thing I've heard was from a boy who was something like 20-22 years old. Very poor, illiterate family. The boy had a bad case of tonsilitis and refused to take any meds because all he needed to do was "bite the sun". Basically at noon he had to look up to the sun, open his mouth as wide as possible and "bite" the sun several times so it would "burn" his tonsils and cure him over the course of a couple weeks. When that wouldn't work, plan B was to do the same at night but only under a full moon.
**TL;DR:** Bite the sun and cure you tonsilitis.
Had an old farmer come in to the ED one day with a severely infected wound on his head. Turned out he had a growth developing on his head for the past few weeks (which turned out to be a tumour). He had been treating it with RoundUp (a potent weed killer) because "that s**t kills everything"...
Probably will be buried at the bottom but here it is. I responded to a 9-1-1 call for a man bleeding. Supposedly the guy had a angiogram (catheter stuck in the artery near your groin to look at the blood vessels near your heart for blockages) earlier that day and was released with the explicit instructions to not mess with the bulky dressing. The old coot decides to "adjust" it, causing it to open, pouring blood out his artery. What does the guy do? He puts duct tape all around his groin. Not just a few pieces, no, all attached to his junk and up and down the leg. It was a noble attempt but did not do much to control the arterial pulsations.
My patient was instilling honey in his eyes to "treat his cataracts and glaucoma" ... wat. Yes he came in for conjunctivitis cause bacteria were having a party on his corneas.
He’s lucky it was just conjunctivitis. I never realised people were so weirdly cavalier with their eyeballs.
The parents of one kid canceled the surgery to repair his ACL because people had prayed for him at their church the Sunday beforehand and he had apparently been miraculously cured.
They called and scheduled surgery later in the week.
I know a doctor. She told me a story (EDIT: that she heard from another doctor) about how this guy came into the ER, an absolute nervous wreck. He was brushing his teeth for the first time a couple years (he was homeless and couldn't afford toothbrushes or toothpaste) when he found a maggot in his mouth. This happened frequently over a course of 3 days, and he self-diagnosed himself with oral myiasis.
Now this guy was bats**t afraid of bugs, so he tried to get 'em out via the quickest way possible - ipecac.
He didn't really think that one through, and ended up vomiting shiploads of maggots before he called 911.
The doc sympathized with him - I'd freak out too, if I barfed up fifty maggots. S**t's scary.
I used to work in a lab in a hospital in a rural town. I got a stool sample from the ER that was basically a blood clot the size of a golf ball. Sometimes the ER gets mixed up and sends me the wrong specimen, like some kind of body fluid and labeled it as urine, for example. I called the patient's nurse and asked what the deal was with the patient and if it was really stool they sent up. The nurse I talked to said the patient thought he'd eaten bad pork and to prevent food poisoning, drank a concoction of bleach, rubbing alcohol, vodka, ibuprofen and some Tums.
Patient comes in to the ED with an abscess. Tells us he knew he had an infection and so ate a pound and a half of raw steak to get the antibiotics that were given to the cow.
didn't help the cow much, I mean it was dead right? please tell me it was dead.
Had a Marine stick a Q-tip up his d**k dipped in hand sanitizer cause he thought he got the clap in Thailand. That's not what Navy medical does guy.
I'm a nursing student and one of my patients had an earache so he decided to hold his daughter's bobby pin to a candle for roughly 5 minutes and then shoved it in the ear that hurt. He is now deaf in that ear and was on fall precautions since he couldn't walk straight. As a bonus, I was able to listen to every episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air that was on that day wherever I was on the floor because the TV was on the loudest volume possible.
What…what did he think that would do? A bobby pin alone would’ve been a bad idea, but a red-hot one?
Dentist reporting in:
I had a guy who had tried to pry his own tooth out with a screwdriver. It did not go well.
A screwdriver? Guy didn't have a pair of pliers? (For legal and medical reasons do not plier out your teeth either. Thank)
I am an EMT who works in the ER. We once had a patient who spilled hot grease all over his arms after a small fryer accident. This happened to take place at the patient's In-laws who happened to be Chinese. Apparently there is an old wives tale in china that says to treat burns with a layer of toothpaste and rock salt. Not wanting to offend his In-laws he goes along with this do it yourself treatment. I think I spent about three hours that evening picking rock salt out of 2nd degree burns and then cleaning out all of the, now dried, toothpaste.
it's not just Chinese, but there is an "old wives tale" that you can treat first-degree burns with a layer of toothpaste since toothpaste will keep the heat inside and help, but it will do nothing for 2nd degree, and rock salt is because its usually used with toothpaste or used instead of toothpaste, and he must have thought all of it together was the Real deal
I have a buddy that is a medic in the United States Navy. One time when he was on leave and in town, us and all of our mutual friends were hanging out, shooting the s**t before a night of typical drunken shenanigans was surely to begin. He then proceeds to tell me multiple stories to which I could not believe. I have forgotten pretty much all of then, except for one...
He proceeded to tell me how a young (late teens early 20's) woman came in complaining of severe stomach pain. He was expecting to diagnose her with menstrual cramps or something else rudimentary and gave her basic pain meds etc. She came back less than a week later, complaining that the pain had only increased. He decided to send her for an X-ray to get it checked out and he could not believe what the results showed.
It **appeared** like roots of some sort were twisting and turning inside her abdomen, and proceeding to wrap around her spine.
Apparently, as a form of do-it-yourself birth control, this young lady had followed her mothers instructions and cut the end off a potato and stuck it all the way up in her vagina. Well, in a damp, moist environment, it began to thrive, as well as partially rot. I cannot even imagine what her gyno must have said, but this story had me in a cold-sweat, near dry-heaving. Easily tops one of the most disturbing stories I've ever heard.
Edit: Emphasis on **appeared**. He did not say it WAS wrapped around her spine, just that's what it LOOKED like it was about to do.
He was expecting to diagnose her with menstrual cramps or something else rudimentary and gave her basic pain meds etc. - Well, there's the first part of the problem. Any wonder why women get fed up with the state of healthcare towards us?
Note: this post originally had 72 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
You read one and think nothing can be worse and then you read the next one. Holy c**p Batman!
Oh, you learn in med school not to say, "This has to be the worst". It's tempting the stupidity of humankind.
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I’m a retired nurse. One time I had a hospital patient with a serious infection in a leg wound. His girlfriend came to visit with something she had printed off social media. It said an infection can be treated by exercise because it increases blood flow to the infected area. I’m certainly in favor of being physically active, but this patient desperately needed IV antibiotics. Myself and the doctor tried to convince him to stay, but his girlfriend talked him into leaving and told us “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he gets lots of exercise.” The patient returned to the hospital by ambulance a few days later and died in the emergency department.
Some of these situations may be caused by the high cost of medical care in U.S. Some situations might be caused by people believing the stupid articles they read on the internet without first verifying the information. Personally, I'd like to see any website dispensing medical advice without the proper qualifications to do so, be shut down and the people running it arrested and heavily fined.
Sure, spend money on law enforcement NOT basic education including critical thinking skills. You can fix a lot with that one skill.
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Think so many of these were caused by the ridiculously unaffordable cost of medical help in the US......
There was this one guy once who thought you could kill COVID by injecting bleach into your veins.
This one guy who led the executive branch for four years...
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I knew a former nurse who was deep into alternative medicine and married to a “healer shaman.” About 15 years ago she had a mole appear above her eyebrow. Years go by and the mole is irregular and growing. Friends urge her to get it looked at and biopsied. But the “nurse” says, no, it’s under control because she concocted a daily ointment for it. After 8 years the mole looks like a tiny finger hanging over her eye. It smells. Again she claims it’s under control because her husband, the shaman, is performing healing rituals with her. Friends keep urging her to go to a doctor. But this former nurse says the medical profession is just a big scam and her diet and spiritual healing remedies will take care of it. At 10 years, her eye is affected. She finally goes to the doctor to have it checked at urging of friends. It’s cancer. She finally gives in to having surgery to save her life. Her eye is removed as well as part of her face. She and hubby still believe in some of the craziest alternative medicine. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against some alternative treatments but they have fallen into the rabbit hole.
Dog drool from a rabies positive dog... to treat autism... I'm in the veterinary field, it's unimaginable to me why anyone would do this. On a practical level, I have some serious questions..
Load More Replies... Worked in a pharmacy for a while in college, and there were all kinds of facepalm stories. I heard one about a man who came in for liquid amoxicillin for his daughter's ear infection. The tech asked if he wanted a syringe to measure the medicine with. His response? "But won't that hurt if I put that in her ears?"
My dad told me once when he was a kid at a family dinner his cousin cracked his tooth on something they were eating. He was in agony and my grandmother's idea was for him to gargle with GASOLINE. She had some insane home remedies but this one was the worst
That and turpentine were very very popular during the Spanish flu.
Load More Replies... Why are so many ppl shoving things into holes where you're not supposed to shove up things (unless a doctor prescribed something)? And all that bleach!?! I sometimes feel a bit crazy for relying on tea for colds and extra water+sleep for headaches... but the ppl on this list makes me feel so so normal. 😏
I posted this as a comment on a specific post but thought I'd share... While I'm not an advocate for this I had several very bad warts on my foot that would not go away (or would come back) despite very painful medical intervention (lasers, freezing, cutting out, etc) and because warts are kind of an anomaly there was no good solution...but I was embarrassed and uncomfortable and purchased a canned freeze spray (think scientific grade cell cryogenics not just dr. Scholl's) and literally froze them every two days for a few weeks. It was torture, I misjudged once and blistered the top of my foot....eventually they went away and stayed away. My point is that desperation and discomfort are powerful motivators to try anything.
Um, that's reallllly not recommended unless you're very precise about it, b/c you can cause damage equivalent to severe frostbite.
Load More Replies... FYI, you can’t fix frostbitten fingers by setting them on fire, but you CAN use them to toast marshmallows!
At the rate of "incidents" involving our members/parts (ladies and gentlemen), I think we owe them big time apologies and a solemn, never-broken vow to never repeat anything of the sort ever again or even think of trying them...
Why permit unlicensed, unqualified people to issue sham info??? Why isn't it punishable?
All of this stuff sounds suspiciously American, which makes me wonder if people in nations that have affordable health care do this kind of crazy stuff. Heck, 15 years ago I accidentally cut a huge gash into my arm and immediately searched for a needle and some nylon thread to sew it up because I couldn’t afford the ER visit. I got help wrapping it tightly instead. The scar is completely gone now.
Me: I'm allergic to surgical glue and tape, please just use stitches. Doctor: right, I'll write that down so we don't forget. *Doctor does hip replacement with tape AND surgical glue* Me, calling the nurse: my leg is swollen up three inches bigger around, and I can't stand the itching, did they use tape or glue?" Nurse: of course, they always use tape and glue! I ended up removing the dressing a day early and starting peeling off the tape and glue. Once I got about half of it off, the swelling went down by two inches and it's a normal color; no longer fire engine red.
It seems a huge percentage of these stories are caused by a lack of education, rather than spite or low intelligence.
Welcome to my world. If anyone asks why I prefer research to practice? ... This is why.
You are clearly well informed, likely educated, and I'm sure well immune to making poor or impulsive choices (regardless of any financial or negative influential circumstances)....Likely many people share your opinion regarding those who can't spell basic words or use spell check. Like the word oxygen for instance. My six year old had that on her spelling homework last week. She got it right but definitely couldn't navigate Bored Panda, let alone the comment section. That would give me the impression anyone who could, would also spell oxygen correctly. I don't know though. What do you think?
Load More Replies... You read one and think nothing can be worse and then you read the next one. Holy c**p Batman!
Oh, you learn in med school not to say, "This has to be the worst". It's tempting the stupidity of humankind.
Load More Replies... I’m a retired nurse. One time I had a hospital patient with a serious infection in a leg wound. His girlfriend came to visit with something she had printed off social media. It said an infection can be treated by exercise because it increases blood flow to the infected area. I’m certainly in favor of being physically active, but this patient desperately needed IV antibiotics. Myself and the doctor tried to convince him to stay, but his girlfriend talked him into leaving and told us “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he gets lots of exercise.” The patient returned to the hospital by ambulance a few days later and died in the emergency department.
Some of these situations may be caused by the high cost of medical care in U.S. Some situations might be caused by people believing the stupid articles they read on the internet without first verifying the information. Personally, I'd like to see any website dispensing medical advice without the proper qualifications to do so, be shut down and the people running it arrested and heavily fined.
Sure, spend money on law enforcement NOT basic education including critical thinking skills. You can fix a lot with that one skill.
Load More Replies... Think so many of these were caused by the ridiculously unaffordable cost of medical help in the US......
There was this one guy once who thought you could kill COVID by injecting bleach into your veins.
This one guy who led the executive branch for four years...
Load More Replies... I knew a former nurse who was deep into alternative medicine and married to a “healer shaman.” About 15 years ago she had a mole appear above her eyebrow. Years go by and the mole is irregular and growing. Friends urge her to get it looked at and biopsied. But the “nurse” says, no, it’s under control because she concocted a daily ointment for it. After 8 years the mole looks like a tiny finger hanging over her eye. It smells. Again she claims it’s under control because her husband, the shaman, is performing healing rituals with her. Friends keep urging her to go to a doctor. But this former nurse says the medical profession is just a big scam and her diet and spiritual healing remedies will take care of it. At 10 years, her eye is affected. She finally goes to the doctor to have it checked at urging of friends. It’s cancer. She finally gives in to having surgery to save her life. Her eye is removed as well as part of her face. She and hubby still believe in some of the craziest alternative medicine. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against some alternative treatments but they have fallen into the rabbit hole.
Dog drool from a rabies positive dog... to treat autism... I'm in the veterinary field, it's unimaginable to me why anyone would do this. On a practical level, I have some serious questions..
Load More Replies... Worked in a pharmacy for a while in college, and there were all kinds of facepalm stories. I heard one about a man who came in for liquid amoxicillin for his daughter's ear infection. The tech asked if he wanted a syringe to measure the medicine with. His response? "But won't that hurt if I put that in her ears?"
My dad told me once when he was a kid at a family dinner his cousin cracked his tooth on something they were eating. He was in agony and my grandmother's idea was for him to gargle with GASOLINE. She had some insane home remedies but this one was the worst
That and turpentine were very very popular during the Spanish flu.
Load More Replies... Why are so many ppl shoving things into holes where you're not supposed to shove up things (unless a doctor prescribed something)? And all that bleach!?! I sometimes feel a bit crazy for relying on tea for colds and extra water+sleep for headaches... but the ppl on this list makes me feel so so normal. 😏
I posted this as a comment on a specific post but thought I'd share... While I'm not an advocate for this I had several very bad warts on my foot that would not go away (or would come back) despite very painful medical intervention (lasers, freezing, cutting out, etc) and because warts are kind of an anomaly there was no good solution...but I was embarrassed and uncomfortable and purchased a canned freeze spray (think scientific grade cell cryogenics not just dr. Scholl's) and literally froze them every two days for a few weeks. It was torture, I misjudged once and blistered the top of my foot....eventually they went away and stayed away. My point is that desperation and discomfort are powerful motivators to try anything.
Um, that's reallllly not recommended unless you're very precise about it, b/c you can cause damage equivalent to severe frostbite.
Load More Replies... FYI, you can’t fix frostbitten fingers by setting them on fire, but you CAN use them to toast marshmallows!
At the rate of "incidents" involving our members/parts (ladies and gentlemen), I think we owe them big time apologies and a solemn, never-broken vow to never repeat anything of the sort ever again or even think of trying them...
Why permit unlicensed, unqualified people to issue sham info??? Why isn't it punishable?
All of this stuff sounds suspiciously American, which makes me wonder if people in nations that have affordable health care do this kind of crazy stuff. Heck, 15 years ago I accidentally cut a huge gash into my arm and immediately searched for a needle and some nylon thread to sew it up because I couldn’t afford the ER visit. I got help wrapping it tightly instead. The scar is completely gone now.
Me: I'm allergic to surgical glue and tape, please just use stitches. Doctor: right, I'll write that down so we don't forget. *Doctor does hip replacement with tape AND surgical glue* Me, calling the nurse: my leg is swollen up three inches bigger around, and I can't stand the itching, did they use tape or glue?" Nurse: of course, they always use tape and glue! I ended up removing the dressing a day early and starting peeling off the tape and glue. Once I got about half of it off, the swelling went down by two inches and it's a normal color; no longer fire engine red.
It seems a huge percentage of these stories are caused by a lack of education, rather than spite or low intelligence.
Welcome to my world. If anyone asks why I prefer research to practice? ... This is why.
You are clearly well informed, likely educated, and I'm sure well immune to making poor or impulsive choices (regardless of any financial or negative influential circumstances)....Likely many people share your opinion regarding those who can't spell basic words or use spell check. Like the word oxygen for instance. My six year old had that on her spelling homework last week. She got it right but definitely couldn't navigate Bored Panda, let alone the comment section. That would give me the impression anyone who could, would also spell oxygen correctly. I don't know though. What do you think?
Load More Replies...