Google can be a scary place when you are sick.
And these medical professionals probably wish you would leave making a diagnosis to them.
These Reddit users who work in the medical field have shared the worst cases of self-diagnoses they have encountered, and they are as silly – and as sad – as you might think.
I’m definitely pregnant
“Had a patient come in once due to weight gain that she thought was due to being pregnant. Made sense, except she’d taken more than half a dozen pregnancy tests and they were all negative. She was convinced she was pregnant though, and wanted me to check. I tell her, ‘OK I’ll do a blood test, since we can detect pregnancy earlier with that,’ and she refuses. Says that she just wants to pee on the stick in front of me and have me read it. So I say sure, and lo and behold, it’s negative,” one doctor wrote.
“Little more questioning, and it turns out she’d been eating literally nothing but chicken wings for weeks. When I asked her why in the world she would do that, she replied that she just really liked chicken wings.”
I’ve got an STI
“I had a patient a few weeks ago who was in her late 80s come in worried about having a sexually transmitted disease. She goes on to tell me that she hasn’t had sex since her husband died. In 1994.”
Is it skin cancer?
“Someone had booked an emergency appointment to have a mole inspected because ‘it had shown up overnight and was cancer.’ About five seconds into the exam, I wipe the ‘mole’ off using my finger. It was chocolate melted onto her skin.”
Collapsed lung, maybe?
“I once went to the hospital because I thought I had a collapsed lung. Turns out I was just super hungover and my ribs hurt from throwing up all night. Very embarrassing and expensive.”
Tongue bumps
“My mom took my sister and me to the doctor when we were kids because we had weird bumps all over the back of our tongues. We were diagnosed with tastebuds.”
Sick as a dog
“My wife is a veterinary nurse. Someone brought their dog in because of small growths in two lines along the dog’s belly. The dog was diagnosed with nipples.”
Sore lips
“I had one patient wait in the ER waiting room for 8 hours for painful lips. Diagnosis: chapped lips. Prescribed chap stick.”
