“How Did They Make This Far?”: 40 Medical Professionals Remember The Most Notorious Darwin Award Candidates They’ve Ever Met
Life is a miracle, not just in the sense that it seems quite infrequent in the universe, but that some people, despite seemingly their best efforts, are still alive. Common sense is not nearly as common as one might think but through the magic of the internet, we can read and hear about all the unhinged thoughts people have had.
A netizen asked medical professionals about patients who had so little common sense that they were surprised they had managed to live so long. The responses were both terrifying and hilarious in equal measure, so get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorite stories, and comment your own experiences.
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The number of patients who I watched die from COVID while refusing to acknowledge its existence is staggering.
I used to be a medical oxygen tech, mostly doing in home work.
One guy was on such a high concentration that he would have drawn nearly zero oxygen from breathing regular atmosphere. This required 2 heavy duty machines hooked up in tandem just to keep him barely alive. This was explained ad nauseum to him and his wife with full signed documentation of every conversation.
They'd shut one machine off because they decided it was too loud. He'd take his mask off because he decided it was too cold. She would unplug the hose if she decided it was in the way. So on and so on, literally everything you could think of that would restrict or cut off his oxygen intake.
Then they would panic and call our emergency service when he started to have a reaction to no oxygen intake. I lived not even 5min away, right beside out EMS/Fire Station, and the call would always come to me to "fix" the machines at random times of the day and night, 3-7 days a week. They refused to call 911 because they 'didn't want to make a scene'.
This went on for ages, well over 18 months, until he was having trouble sleeping one night and shut the machines off before going back to bed. Its been years and I still see the wife around town, she always glares at me as if I'm the one who killed him.
Woman comes in with no prenatal care to labor and delivery in labor.
OBGYN Resident taking a history: Do you have any allergies?
Patient: yes I’m allergic to water
Resident: …ok… what kind of reaction happens when you drink water?
Patient: oh it makes me pee
Yeah lady that’s a feature not a bug
There are people allergic to water - I can only imagine how c**p that is.
To be fair, pre-modern health specialists had just as little common sense as some of the patients mentioned here. Bloodletting was a shockingly common procedure that generally left the person weak and more susceptible to disease, and it’s particularly strange how often it was employed given that at the time people did already know how important it was to have blood.
Traditional Chinese medicine goes even further, as one of the main funders of the ivory trade. Multiple animal species are at risk because people, despite living in a modern, educated society, still think a random rhino’s horn will magically heal them. Even though they can very easily compare the effects of traditional medicine compared to modern medicine, people still chose the former.
I'm a vet. A few years ago I had a client bring his young cat in complaining of lethargy. Besides being a bit underweight, the physical exam was unremarkable so I asked more questions about the cat's diet:
Me: What do you feed the cat?
Owner: [online trendy raw food brand]
Me: How is his appetite? Does he finish what you feed him?
Owner: Yes, he always eats everything.
Me: How much do you feed him?
Owner: 1/2 cup.
Me: Once or twice daily?
Owner: Once every 3 or 4 days.
Me: ........ You only feed your cat twice a week?
Owner: I believe in a more natural feeding approach, and based on my research that's how often cats eat in the wild.
This owner was slowly starving his cat to death based on some cockamamie idea he'd made up watching National Geographic. I had to explain to him that domestic cats are not tigers, and that small wildcats eat 10-20 small meals daily. Surprise surprise the cat's lethargy and weight improved with regular feeding.
I'm in the ER. So many stories.
The one that left me dumbfounded was a woman was brought in by her sister for pelvic cramps, amenorrhea for three months. Lo and behold, she's pregnant.
Sister informs me that she sleeps with the Brazilian construction workers building the condo complex next door.
I ask if they have any questions.
The patient asked me if her baby would come out speaking Spanish.
After a long pause, and her sister staring at the ceiling, I told her, No, because they speak Portuguese in Brazil.
Patient seemed relieved and the sister hustled her out of the ER before I could discharge her.
Lady brings her baby into the ER with a rectal temp of 103. Kids tachy as hell and looks like s**t.
Refuses all medications. Says she doesn't believe in them and wonders why her herbal tea (she brought a jug of it) isn't working.
Wants us to just check her out. Thinks a children's emergency room just checks them out.
Try to explain why the kid needs an nsiad. Keeps refusing. Says she doesn't know what's in it. I bring up that fact she had her kid in a hospital, and that she recovered medication herself (IV, epidural, etc). Doesn't budge.
Only concerned for herself, told her that when the kid has a seizure or goes unresponsive and you call 911, you can expect the medics to give the kid everything it needs regardless of whether you like it or not.
Only when the doc threatened to contact social services for child endangerment and abuse did she start to listen. For like 5 whole seconds.
Left against medical advice. People like this exist and breed.
Other attempts to systematically approach medicine have just as many strange ideas. The ancient Greeks, for all their developments, still believed that the body was run by four humors that correspond, improbably, to earth, wind, water, and fire. How exactly earth and fire were vitally important to the operation of our body was never properly explained, as one doesn’t have to be a modern scientist to see how fire can hurt a lot more than it heals.
Not me but my mother would pick up shifts as a nurse sometimes in Labour and Delivery and she had met a handful of women who didn’t know the baby was going to be coming out of their vaginas. Like no clue. My mom usually said something like “how you got it in is how it’s coming out honey”. This was the late 90 early 2000s.
Where - where did they think the baby was coming from? The stork? That it would burst from their forehead like Athena?
Optometrist here. If I had a nickel for every time someone said they use urine for eyedrops I would have $0.10. Which is not a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
I’m shortsighted, so I use contact lenses all the time. When I was still wearing glasses, I visited my paternal grandmother, and she advised me to always wash my eyes with my first urine in the morning. She was also shortsighted. I just nodded to avoid an argument. She didn’t know better.
Working midnight in the ER.
Family brings in a 4 year old at 2 am-ish. I ask them what is wrong.
Them: “Ask him (the 4 year old). He said he needed to see a doctor.”
Me: “Did he say anything was wrong?”
Them: “No. He said he needed to see a doctor, so brought him.”
[A quick back and forth that firmly establishes that they actually showed up in the ER at 2 am, purely because the 4 year old said he needed to see a doctor and they don’t know why]
Me to child: “Why do you need to see a doctor?”
Kid: “The doctor has suckers.”
Me: 😳
To be clear, it is the parents who lack sense and not the kid.
Medieval logic had a certain logic to it, however. Once you accept that the disease is supernatural, generally a sign or punishment from God, then the doctor can focus on treating the symptoms, as the cause is, obviously, the transgressions of the victim. This also meant that doctors could easily explain why draining a person's blood seemed to kill them, as really it was God’s punishment, not poor medicine at fault.
I'm a nurse. This isn't about a patient rather than my dad. He is convinced that insulin is what is giving people diabetes and doctors are prescribing it just to make money. After 30 minutes of telling him why that's wrong, he said not to be so liberal and I didn't understand because I'm not a doctor...
Former vet tech. Had a women scream at me and my vet for telling her it's the law to have your dog vaccinated against rabies. She said the rabies vaccine causes autism in dogs and makes puppies stupid.
Side note: 3 weeks later her puppy died of parvo. She got another one immediately after and did not clean her home. 2 more died in the following months. Animal control and the city had to get involved.
Not me but my wife who is a vet: had a client who got mad at her because he didn't realize that once he neutered his dog that he wouldnt be able to breed it.
This is also why people would often travel to monasteries to be healed. If the affliction is divine in nature, one would have to fix their relationship with God to get anything done. On the one hand, this would actually remove some sick individuals from urban centers, although we now can imagine the strain that pre-car overland travel would have on an ill individual.
Rural ER doc here: 35 year old female walks in with right sided jaw/neck swelling. “ I think it happened because I ate some meat yesterday that my body is reacting to” … 10 minutes later : “oh yeah, and I accidentally swallowed a bee and it stung me in my mouth right before this happened. Sorry I forgot to mention that”
I worked ED for 10 years. Everyday. Everyday people come in and it shocks you how they managed to evade death for that long.
One of the worst was we had a guy come in. He was a twin. He told us he needed to get checked for STDs because his sister apparently just got one. We of course had to ask if he has had sex with her and he said no, but they were twins so what she has, so does he. After a collective sigh of relief that this wasn’t some weird Alabama your my sister s**t, we had to educate him that is not how it worked at all.
They changed the name from venereal disease to Sexually Transmitted Disease to make it clear how these diseases happen and yet this guy still did not get it!
This was one of the funniest yet cutest one, was a studen doing a shift in Andrology/reproductive health
Doc: *So you’re trying to have kids but not managing to. So do you have any other kid?*
Patient: *yes Doc I have one.
*
Doc: *ok so we need to do this and this and that
*
Patient: *Ok great*
Then he proceeds to visit him and stuff, after which he goes away.
After a couple secs he knocked the door again saying: *Hello Doc, my wife told me that it would be relevant to you that the son I have is adopted, but that’s make no difference to me I always considered my own son!*
Many of these practices stayed around until the 19th century, when, finally, a more systematic approach was applied. George Washington, for example, had his blood drained as a response to a sore throat, which most likely made a common ailment worse and resulted in his death. There doesn't seem to have been a good understanding among medical specialists that the same procedure they had done for over a thousand years was, actually, killing people.
Had an adult male patient who needed a Foley catheter. His mother was in the room, and they both lived together in the backwoods of TN. I informed them both of the order for a catheter, how it works, and why it was needed. His mother stated “Well he’s still a virgin and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with his virginity being taken in a hospital.”
Not a personal experience, but one from a colleague of mine (I only saw the pics).
So this 60 something year old suffers from an acute complication and gets a Pacemaker to solve the problem. Everything goes normally and as planned, he recovers, every care and meds that he needs to take are prescribed, explained and medical appointments with a Cardiologist/Arritmologist are scheduled so that he may get the follow-up he needs.
The man then prooceds to never show up to any appointment and never answear any calls from the hospital to know of him and reschedule. This went on for around 3 years. Until he shows up without former warning and asks to talk with the doctor that did the procedure to put his pacemaker. People are weirded out but seeing that on that day the doctor was present and this patient was in clear distress, they talk to him and manage a couple of minutes to have the doctor check on him.
Inside the appointment room, the doctor takes notice that this man is wearing a bra inside his shirt. The man explains he has been wearing his daughters bra for 3 months after his "problem" got worse. The shirt is asked to be taken off and there he stands, the shirtless man wearing his daughters bra, showing off the pacemaker, that should have been kept inside his body, dangling outside of it, being hold by the left bra cup, with a big infected open wound above it with the pacemaker leads still inserted onto his veins and connected to his heart.
Nobody has any idea how the man let that situation come to be or how he didnt die of sepsis or any other health problem that may appear for that matter.
TLDR: Man gets a Pacemaker. Doesnt show up to appointments. Three years later comes to the hospital looking for help, wearing his daughters bra for 3 months, to serve as a holder for the pacemaker that got out of his body from his infected open wound.
A family members worked at a hospital and had a patient come in with really strange physical and seemingly neurological issues.
Couldn’t figure out what was causing it. Didn’t match anything he knew of and tests were inconclusive.
He asked her to walk him through her day.
Turns out she was drinking a cup of bleach a day and bathing in it to keep clean and healthy her whole life. Same with her family…. Who all died very young.
She could not accept that drinking bleach was bad for her health.
I recall a President somewhere thinking something like this was also a good idea?...................
Had an 18 or 19 year old girl come in my ER with some complaint that required an X-ray. It’s standard that we do a urine pregnancy test prior to imaging on any female of childbearing years. She insisted she’d never had sex and there was zero possibility of pregnancy. We did the test anyway and it resulted that she was pregnant. We did a blood pregnancy test to confirm the result, since she insisted she couldn’t possibly be pregnant because she’d never had sex. That was positive too. We gave her a few minutes to herself to figure out what the hell happened, and when I returned to check on her a short time later she asked me if she could get pregnant even though her boyfriend, “didn’t go all the way in.” She 100% believed that long as his penis wasn’t entirely in her it didn’t count as sex. It took nearly a half hour of explaining reproduction to her for her to understand that whether it’s halfway in or all the way in sperm travel.
And this, folks, is why sex education is important. Not that abstinence only nonsense some states teach instead.
I have a heard a story about a patient on whom it was impressed that she couldn't miss her fractions of radiotherapy if she was busy, and to inform us if she couldn't make the appointment.
She couldn't make it. So she sent her *twin sister* to receive the radiation therapy in her place. She answered yes to all the ID Questions. Had the same birthday etc.
It was noticed when radiographers had trouble matching her to the CT. Because the CT was of a person who had undergone a mastectomy. Whilst the "patient", still had both breasts.
This, many years later, is told to new staff during training about the importance of ensuring correct identification - because you would be stunned the number of people who try to skip the queue. The number isn't high. But it isn't Zero.
Had a patient come in for facial burns because he smoked while wearing his oxygen....twice....in the same week....
Diabetic patient with foot ulcers that kept being infected with a lot of different gut microbes. Turned out he used to put his foot in the toilet and scrub the open ulcers with the toilet brush.
Had a buddy who was an EMT, he was called out to a location for a gunshot wound.
Apparently what happened is a father was mowing his lawn when he accidentally touched part of the mower near the engine and burned his hand. He got mad at the lawnmower, pulled out his pistol, and shot it. The bullet ricocheted and hit his son in the leg.
Wife brought dude to the ED because he wasn’t really talking to her, or doing much for that matter. For 4 days!! Turns out he stopped taking his blood thinners because “I don’t feel any better when I take it” and they could not afford it (f*****g American healthcare system). Anyways, he had a huge stroke. Basically 1/4 of his brain was just liquified mush. Please Reddit, bring your loved ones to the ED immediately when they cannot talk to you. And for f***s shake, do not stop taking your anticoagulation unless a doctor tells you to stop.
I floated to the COVID floor when I was a new CNA at the hospital. A 40-something man with no history of breathing problems was on 5 Liters of continuous oxygen regardless of activity level. (For those who aren't medical, that is a lot for someone that age. Older folks on continuous oxygen are typically on 2 Liters during the day.) He told every single person who came into his room about how COVID was a hoax.
At that moment I realized how deranged people have become, and began to worry about my right-wing relatives. I was correct to worry, as when they got COVID they proceeded to take ivermectin and s**t their brains out, and STILL ARGUED WITH ME THAT IT WAS SMART TO TAKE IT.
I am a dermatologist in India. As is the culture here, people eat with their hands, and almost all of our curries or even other dry side dishes have a lot of turmeric. It is common knowledge to anyone born and brought up in India, that this means the nails of your dominant hand (statistically the right hand) are going to be yellow-stained, because we have seen this happen since our childhood. Usually this wears off in about a day and a half if you wash it a couple of times.
Cut to the first patient in my OPD, a young girl in her early 20s, very anxious.
Me : "What brings you here today?"
P : "Doc, my right hand fingernails keep getting yellow discoloured."
Me : "Only right hand ?"
P : "Yes. And only after meals."
Me : "Erm..do you eat with your hands?"
P : "Yes, always."
Me : "So...You know it's just turmeric right?"
P : "Yes, but can you make it stop happening."
Me : "For God's sake, use a spoon."
P : "So you mean there is no medicine to make it stop?"
Me : ....
P : .....
Me : **NO**!
This might hit home more with people of South Asian cultures or people who habitually eat turmeric-cooked food with their hands. Anyway, for a grown-a*s person to complain of this was just well surprising and a little ridiculous.
Saw a chart once where a person came in for a burn to their eye. They told the Dr they read online that warm milk in the eye can help with irritation and their eyes were irritated. So they BOILED milk and then poured it in their eye. Burned it all.
Former practicing surgeon:
Male came in with a small bowling pin up his backside, for the third time!
While in PA school I was educating a guy and his pregnant wife on a vasectomy. I’m about halfway through my deal when he cuts me off and asks, ‘Just give it to me straight, can I keep them in a jar after?’
…dude thought he was going to get his balls chopped off at the request of his wife. Needless to say he was very happy and much more on board to go through with the procedure. Props to him for thinking he was ~literally~ getting his balls removed to prevent having anymore kids.
"So, you're lactose intolerant?"
"yes"
"And you knew this before?"
"yes"
"And you drank a milkshake?"
"yes"
"What size?"
"Large"
The rest of the night was the kid screaming and groaning in the ED waiting room.
I always hate seeing the patient who weighs over 600lbs and comes to the ED for shortness of breath and refuses to acknowledge that their weight may have something to do with it. It’s not their weight that bothers me it’s the utter lack of common sense.
I can imagine them saying, "You're fat shaming me. It's not my fault. You're a doctor, give me something for it or I'lll sue you "
I worked in cancer research/surgery a couple years ago. There is a good amount of people who will refuse to have a small removal/surgery because they think holistic medicine or praying it away will work. They always come back and we always have to remove so much more. One time a patient had a melanoma on their calf and the doctor wanted to do a simple wide excision, but they left because they wanted to pray it away. Came back a couple months later because it got bigger and we had to amputate their leg. Pretty sure they had positive lymph nodes at that point too.
Saw a comment once of a woman who was advised to eat a packet of oatmeal for breakfast each morning to help with her weight. She came back in for checkups over the course of many months and was somehow gaining weight faster and blood work was getting worse even though she swore up and down she was following the diet. Everyone was baffled until they questioned her further and learned that she had been eating a packAGE of oatmeal COOKIES every morning for breakfast.
ER nurse with 7 years experience. The list is nearless endless. People with massive burns because they smoked in bed is not as rare as you'd think.
But the one that got me the most was a guy who came in for chest pain and fatigue. Ekg revealed he was having a really bad heart attack. Activated or cath lab for emergency stents to hopefully save the guys life. They almost always access the patient through the groin for the procedure so one of our jobs in the ER is to shave the patients groin to prep them for cath lab. We get the clippers out (we done use actual razors anymore) and informed the guy we needed to shave him. He refused. No problem, we will let cath lab do it once he's knocked out. Nope, guy refuses to sign the consent for the stents because he doesn't want his pubes shaved.
After trying to educate him, pleading with him, and contacting every goddamn lawyer the hospital has... The guy signed him self out AMA and went home. He would rather die than have his curlies shaved. We looked up his address and we weren't the closest hospital so if he died at home, medics would take him to a different hospital. Doubt he survived the day.
I’m a pharmacist. One evening shift I was working a relief shift (not my usual pharmacy). A man comes in looking distressed.
Man: I had sexual relations with a woman I do not intend to pursue a long term relationship with. (Yes. He said it just like that)
Me: okay. I’m assuming there was an accident or it was unprotected. How long ago did it happen?
Man: last night, at 7pm on the couch. (Woah TMI, I just need to know approximate time to know if plan B will work o.o)
Me: we have this medication called Plan B, and since the incident happened within 72 hours-
Man: oh yes, I got that for her already yesterday right after we finished. We want to know if there is anything we can do to know if she is pregnant now.
Me: unfortunately not. She’ll have to wait 3 weeks or so to see if she gets her period, and if she doesn’t then she can do a pregnancy test then. Theoretically you could do a blood test for faster results, but that would also not be until a couple of weeks, at least.
Man: we’re just really anxious because she really doesn’t want to be pregnant. Is there anything that she can take to prevent the pregnancy? Any multivitamin? Minerals? Food?
Me: she’s already taken it, which was the plan B. There are some other options but those are prescriptions. And no, there are no over-the-counter products she can take.
Man: What about me? Is there anything I can take now to prevent the pregnancy? Any multivitamins or minerals?
Me:……………………………..No sir. There isn’t anything you can take *now*
I suppose the fact he asked is slightly better than him doing his own “research” and trying stuff, but…wow.
Just yesterday a child patient needed a blood transfusion. The mother was apprehensive because they thought their kid could be vaccinated through the transfusion.
The level of ignorance of some people never ceases to amaze me
My mom is an OBGYN, in the field for over 30 years. The stories I hear from her blow my mind. She had a patient, pregnant with her second child, who genuinely believed small pieces of her organs traveled through the umbilical cord and into babies. That’s how they get their organs.
That's right up there with believing that babies breathe through the mother's belly button!
Not a medical professional, but I used to volunteer at a free medical clinic to take vitals and histories. A woman came in with pneumonia and wanted to know why her normal treatment of drinking half a bottle of Listerine and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day wasn't working. I asked why she thought smoking was good treatment for a lung infection and she said, "Indians used to purify the ground by burning all the weeds away before planting, so I'm smoking to purify my lungs."
I left that one to the doctor.
Not me, but sibling - I don't think he'd mind me sharing the story just on the off chance it prevents someone else from making this mistake. Lots of surgeons have a similar story, but thankfully this one doesn't end in someone's death.
Parents claim their child hasn't eaten anything before surgery, as they were carefully directed. Turns out they thought the surgical team was just being cruel to their child and when she said she was hungry that morning, they detoured on their way to the surgical center and got her a full Southern breakfast. She damn near died aspirating biscuits and gravy.
I've rarely seen my brother so angry (and disgusted - somehow biscuits and gravy looks even more nauseating the second time around) and he was just recounting what had happened. I have no doubt he tore a strip off the parents once their five-year-old was stabilized, and they probably still felt justified and angry at the surgeon for telling them what they could and could not feed their child right before anesthesia.
ETA The parents did in fact feel justified and hard-done-by, although afaik they didn't express anger at my brother (knowing him, they didn't get a word in edgewise). Definitely no acknowledgment or realization that they could easily have killed their own child or that they'd made a bad decision. I remember they were annoyed by her whining for food.
I worked for an OBGYN who had a patient he prescribed vaginal suppositories for. When she complained of no improvement, she came back in for another exam. He found 7 FOIL WRAPPED suppositories in her vagina.
And this is exactly why packaging often seems to point out the incredibly obvious.
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Yep. There is no test for "can they cross a street by themselves" or "do they understand why you don't stick your hand in a fire" If there were, some folks would never graduate from that school.
On the other hand, my wife, despite having normal eye pressures, went to a glaucoma specialist who recommended immediate surgery. She demurred and went to a second glaucoma specialist. She doesn't have glaucoma. Sometimes the idiot is the doctor.
Yep. There is no test for "can they cross a street by themselves" or "do they understand why you don't stick your hand in a fire" If there were, some folks would never graduate from that school.
On the other hand, my wife, despite having normal eye pressures, went to a glaucoma specialist who recommended immediate surgery. She demurred and went to a second glaucoma specialist. She doesn't have glaucoma. Sometimes the idiot is the doctor.
