Doctors, When Did You Know A Patient Was 'Faking It'? (r/AskReddit)

▶ Fresh AskReddit Stories: Doctors/nurses of Reddit; What is the most obvious case of a patient 'faking it' you have ever seen?

#reddit #doctor #stories

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[cmills]

Got accused of faking multiple symptoms that didn't seem to match up and contradicted each other. Very angrily swapped doctors twice. So thankful for my new nurse practitioner who listened to my endless list of symptoms and knew immediately what it was once she felt my neck. Doing well now without my Cancerous Thyroid.

[green]

If you are that desperate for glasses, get a pair of fake ones with plastic lenses. If you wear real prescription lenses that you don't need, you can damage your eyesight.

[gracelewis]

Are we going to talk about the lady who made her baby drink her period blood?!

[iamlearningjapanese]

The seizure one actually makes me mad. I have epilepsy and all types aren’t same, plus some of the stuff people go through

[cellogirlrw]

14:32 I used to have Conversion Disorder. It's actually a dissociative disorder caused by psychological trauma where the suppressed anxiety from the trauma is expressed as physical symptoms. Furthermore, patients will deny feeling anxious about anything and think their symptoms are related to a physical condition. To complicate things even more complicated, one patient has vastly different symptoms from the next. I have often heard of people who have Conversion Disorder experiencing paralysis in certain parts of the body, but, I experienced it as seizure-like episodes, hallucinations, and severe dissociation, where I was completely unaware of what was happening around me, often for minutes to hours. My doctors figured out that it was Conversion Disorder was that the only thing that woke me up was an anti-anxiety medication, called Ativan. Interestingly, I was also given a placebo that my doctors said was Ativan, and the placebo was just as effective as the real thing. It's amazing how powerful the mind is.

[patryder]

Witnessed a guy carefully lie down on the floor and start shaking his arms and legs. I watched him for a few seconds, and asked him, "What the hell are you doing?" "I'm having a seizure." "People who are having a grand mal seizure cant talk during the seizure." "I can." I laughed and walked away. BTW, I LOVE the story about the doc who said, "You know it's not a real seizure because they're not peeing themselves."

[Tarantio]

One of my mates who's now an NHS Dr, but is a former army doctor, deals with fake seizures by wiping out the largest plastic pipe he can and screams that he needs to do a urinary tract flush so he needs help pushing the big cath pipe. 5 nurses flood in (3 of the prettier girlies and 2 big burly men), always brings a miraculous cure about!

[cherryl]

These people are the reason I can't get pain meds for suicide-level toothaches.

[Lauritonas]

Lol i never expected to get glasses, we went to the doc due to me being tired a lot and having head pain. After telling him this he was like "can u tell me what letters u see on that board" and i could see like the top 2 lines and my problem was found pretty quickly. I went in there expecting something to be extremely wrong lol.

[sophia_x]

7:46, hope they called CPS on that mom

[vitisvinifera]

I have borderline hatred for that mother who gave her baby her blood from the worst orifice to get blood from...

[MissSpaz]

I really think a lot of nurses and doctors are prone to just believing many patients are faking seizures due to the opiate crisis recently. I have a lot of health problems, and from 2010 to 2014 I had untreated CRPS (a severe pain disorder, the worst one in medicine) due to the opiate crisis and not being able to find a doctor that actually believed I was in pain. All the stress caused my cyclical vomiting and seizure disorder (frontal lobe seizures from a head injury) to get extremely bad. I would be vomiting all day, and then have a grand mal seizure that caused my teeth to break from the combination of being weakened from the stomach acid and the clenching during the seizure. This would happen almost every month to every other month.
Once I was out of town to see my pain specialist and had a seizure where I fell off my crutches and hit my head on the ground, and it was bleeding pretty bad. I went to the nearest hospital to get stitched up. The nurses and doctors were treating me really strangely after I threw up a couple times. I had a mild seizure and woke up with my eye/face hurting really bad but I couldn't figure out what I hit it on. I called my mom after one of my nurses was being REALLY rude to me. I ended up having a grand mal seizure while I was on the phone with her and she told me later that they were saying I was some sort of addict (I refused any pain medications they offered me for my head wound so I don't understand this) and she was able to put together that they were dropping stuff on my face to see if I moved my head out of the way to avoid it- and I'm guessing that's where my black eye came from.
She told me this after she drove to the hospital because she was so angry over how I was being treated. But before she got there, the same nurse accused me of being on meth, because my teeth were in such bad shape. I was so angry even before she told me everything that he said. After we confronted him, he called me a "really good actress". I just started crying and demanded my crutches so I could leave. He refused to hand them to me saying I could walk! I was SO fucking angry. I spoke to HR or his superior (I don't remember) and he denied everything. I left and my mom drove me to my local hospital where they were aware of my history of seizures. I ended up later pressing a lawsuit against the hospital but it was dropped because I couldn't prove anything (which was bullshit because the rude nurse wasn't the only nurse in the room!).
If any nurses or doctors are reading this, please don't be so hasty to believe someone is faking a seizure or pain!

[crazybunnyproductions]

Once I went to the nurse with a severe pain in my hand, specially along the base of my thumb and down the wrist to the point where I couldn't even hold my pencil without experiencing severe pain. I was worried I had injured my thumb, or broken it somehow. The nurse pretty much told me to suck it up, since I was being over dramatic. I refused, called home, and got an actual doctor to look at my hand. turns out I'd damaged a ligament in my thumb. I had a small cast put around my hand was on my way, and just dealt with being unable to use my good hand for awhile.


The nurse seemed annoyed when I told her. It's not like I was known for wanting to dodge classes, I liked all the subjects I was in. I'm just a wuss for my shitty health.

[Khaltazar]

I know doctors and nurses almost always assume people are seeking drugs. I was involved in a 5 car accident where I was sandwiched (no damage to me physically, but my car was totaled). Initially, I felt completely fine (adrenaline probably). About 15 minutes later my lower back and neck started hurting. I told the police I didn't need an ambulance since I could walk and I had someone that could drive me to the hospital. I got to the hospital and told them I was in a 5 car accident and my lower back hurts and my neck hurts. They take my insurance and ask me to give a blood and urine sample (I assume to make sure I am not a druggy seeking drugs). The doctor comes in after like 6 hours and finally gives me a x-ray of my back. Says there are no problems, but is treating me like I am only there for pain medication. He gave me some pain medication that I said I didn't need if there were no problems with my back or neck (mentioning that maybe my muscles were in shock after being tense or something and if there were no problems on the x-ray I would deal with the pain until it calms down). He still gave me a pill and watched as I took it and sent me home. I know doctors have to be wary of patients seeking drugs, but there are most of us who just want to make sure our spine isn't out of position and/or we aren't bleeding internally. The doctor may know symptoms of a patient who is bleeding internally or has spine damage, but a normal patient doesn't. We just feel pain and are worried it might be due to the accident pushing something out of place. My neck still hurts to this day, but stretching it helps. It doesn't hurt to the point I need any medication for it for sure. It sucks that lots of people go to doctors for drugs, it makes some doctors not treat other patients with respect, only making them think "what story is this guy going to spill to make me feel sorry for him and give him drugs?". I may have gotten a bad doctor or someone who was just really tired near the end of their shift or just got back from dealing with a drug seeker, but I would like for doctors to treat people innocent before automatically being guilty and if they show signs of being a drug seeker, then get them out of the hospital.

[jayxfrost]

5:04 - I had the right opposite happening to me once.
Once I twisted my ankle at elementary school (actually one girl tripped and shoved me off a jungle gym but she bullied me back then so it was most likely just pretended and she did it on purpose... but like everyone I never directly said I was bullied while it was happening).
I had to walk home from school (no school buses in my country) it was like 15 mins of walking. I tried so hard I actually somehow convinced my brain into believing I was okay. When I came home my mom was like "What's wrong with your leg?"
I was really convinced I didn't limp at all! Placebo effect and denial at its finest.

[CaTastrophy]

8:23 I've heard a few variants of that from my ex-gf/soon-to-be SIL, who's a paramedic, alongside things regarding people faking a few other things, like a diabetic coma. Some of my favorites:

"One way to tell if this guy is faking a coma is this. (holds patient's arm straight up while continuing to talk) Now, if it's real, when I let go, the arm should stay vertical" Followed by the paramedic letting go, and the arm stayed straight up for the remaining time needed to get to the hospital, and all the way in, to the amazement of just about everyone who saw it.

"Ah, he's not having a seizure, he's not spouting random words in Latin!" (First time she heard it, the guy faking a seizure then said "But I don't know any Latin", second time, GF said it, and the guy started speaking PIG LATIN really fast, bit his tongue, and screamed in pain, before continuing to speak pig latin)

"Don't worry, this guy's faking it, when someone's having a seizure, they usually punch their nose as one of the first th- Ow-Ah-OW-OWW- (Said as he blocked the patient's fist from hitting said patient's face repeatedly, until said fists got restrained) Damn, this guy's got an insanely strong right arm. What'd he do to get that strong in just one arm? Fap all day, every day?"

EDIT: Oh, forgot one: "Okay, hold him down, we gotta put in the catheter or else he's gonna pop"

[mLify]

Well this explains why they treat people with rare conditions so badly when they're seen in the ER. They figure it's just another mental patient.

[SpeedyCheetahCub]

I don't understand how some people don't know how to fake being unconscious. I mean, yeah the trick of dropping their arm on their face or blowing on their eyelids would give it away, but are people really out here thinking that your entire body freezes up when you are unconscious? Even as a kid, I knew that you went limp as a noodle, not stiff as a board.

[jessiecator]

Took my 18m old to the hospital when he had an accident at home and couldn't walk, they did an x-ray, couldn't see anything and sent us home. Still couldn't walk. Took him back, same thing. Took him back several times, eventually said look there's obviously something wrong, he's a baby and he was walking and he's had a fall and now he can't stand up (he'd reverted to crawling), young doctor in ER suggested he was faking it so I stayed home from work - my husband was a stay at home dad, he was a perfectly well balanced child, but anyway, they put a cast on, I think to make me go away. He was walking again right after it dried.

When he had it taken off we happened to have an appointment at the other hospital that same week (used to be our closest one but we'd moved, his pediatrician was still there) and I told her what had happened, she said "Well let's see then", sent him for an x-ray which showed a very clear and healing break line across his tibia. We are not all faking, please listen to us.

Had to have a follow up appointment with an oncologist because of the way it was healing - most commonly seen in breaks caused by osteosarcoma...and neglect, where the break has gone untreated for a period of time. Fortunately, since they knew our story (he was out course cleared by the cancer specialist) we weren't put on the "At risk" register with the other abused kids :/ We tried and tried to get help but they wouldn't listen.

[kylemossi]

I had 4 withdrawal seizures when quitting drinking. Thankfully I don't remember shitting and pissing myself or nearly biting my tongue in half. It was by far the scariest most traumatizing thing that has happened to me. I cannot BELIEVE that someone would fake that shit.