In one of the old science fiction stories by Herbert George Wells, there is a gentleman obsessed with the idea of "losing weight" - and one day he really finds an ancient remedy, after taking which he literally becomes weightless and is forced to wear metal weights in his clothes and underwear for the rest of his days. It's just that any obsession with your illnesses should have reasonable limits.
However, medicine does know many examples where people went to doctors, absolutely sure that they had some serious diseases, and no diagnoses, tests or explanations could actually affect them. So this collection by Bored Panda is dedicated to just such cases of patients totally faking their illnesses.
More info: Reddit
#1
I'm not a doctor but a nurse.
There was a geriatric patient taking advantage of the call bell, because she was an attention seeker. She always needed really basic things to get done for her because she thought the place was a hotel (it was a rehabilitation ward, and we should try to motivate patients to do as much for themselves as possible).
She would ring the bell for reasons like "please lift the blanket up for me" or "please pass me my phone" or "please feed me" and claimed that her hands didn't work. I caught her several times lifting herself off the bed with her hands, grabbing her phone when it rang, you get the gist.
After days of saying no and that she needs to start doing things for her self, she grew more and more frustrated. Eventually she snapped, grabbed me by my collar, shook me agressively and yelled "what don't you understand about the fact that my hands don't work?!?!"
I didn't know what to tell her... I just looked at her and blinked as she slowly released her death grip off me.
I guess I healed her hands. Praise the Lord. 1 up vote = one prayer for an old ladies arthritis.
Image credits: Beasti-benz
#2
My mom's an ER nurse and she said once some crazy lady came in and complained hat she had the whooping cough. And whenever she coughed she followed it with a loud "woooOOOP!".
Image credits: mnfundude70
#3
30y/o woman came to the ED with such "excruciating belly pain", "paralyzed", "oh god it hurts when you press there", "MUST HAVE OXYCODONE NOW". ED doc said if she can get out of the ED bed and do 20 jumping jacks, we can give her the Oxy. She did 20 jumping jacks, then got kicked out of the ED.
Image credits: confusedbarney
There are many threads on the Internet where the topic starters ask doctors about the strangest cases of their patients faking diseases, or being overdramatic (or sometimes underdramatic) - and each time, the discussion gets more than one or two thousand comments.
Are many doctors and nurses natural-born storytellers? Or perhaps hospitals just seem like places where something weird happens from time to time... Who knows?
Be that as it may, we have specially collected for you three dozen stories about different people who were being very difficult while visiting doctors, and how it all ended for them all. So please feel free to enjoy these stories - from sad to eye-opening and sometimes outright hilarious!
#4
I'm an ICU and ER nurse. We get a lot of malingering in the ER. One day, one of our frequent fliers came in and started faking a seizure in triage. Now obviously I know this lady and she's fake-seized a million times before. But this time it's in the lobby in front of about 30 people, who have no way of knowing that it's fake.
She's lolling around on the floor making a d**n fool of herself and folks look horrified. I walked up to her and said calmly:
"Karen. What are you doing?"
To which this genius responds, "I'M SEIZING!"
I told her to stop seizing. So she did.
Edit: no, her name wasn't actually Karen. I just did that for confidentiality.
Image credits: CursesandMutterings
#5
My cousin got glasses. Her 7 year old little sister also wanted glasses because she thought it was so cool to wear them.
So she started telling her teachers she couldn't read what was on the chalkboard. And she'd squint at home, and go incredibly close to the tv to watch things because she said she couldn't see things clearly. Her parents got worried and took her to the doctor.
She read everything wrong on the vision test. Everyone seemed convinced that she needed glasses. But the doctor was a little concerned because the tests indicated she needed really thick glasses, and usually that wasn't the case unless there was a family history of vision issues. Her parents both had 20/20 vision and her sister only had astigmatism. They all realized she was faking it.
So the doctor told her parents in front of her that she'd need some pretty intense eye surgery so she'd be able to see without glasses. They even wheeled in a machine to make it convincing to say they could do the surgery right then and there.
She freaked out, confessed to faking it all and started to cry. She got grounded for a while.
Image credits: sensitiveinfomax
#6
Not a doctor but a nurse Once had a patient having a “seizure”. The other ER nurse and I *knew* she was faking it. He said as much. She suddenly “stopped” seizing (miraculously), looked straight at him and yelled “shut up fat boy”.
He and I laughed so hard. He (the other nurse) was referred to as such (fat boy) for few months after that.
At least she wasn’t having a seizure ;)
Edit: spelling & clarification.
Image credits: bionicfeetgrl
In this collection, you will find tales and plots for every taste - from completely conscious manipulations of someone's health for some selfish purposes (for example, to receive insurance compensation), to completely ridiculous situations where a person is sincerely convinced that they have some kind of disease (or they have been told this for many years).
Well, and of course, a separate category of stories is related to kids and teens - because a child's sense of their body and their own psyche is often radically different from that of adults. In other words, children may simply not realize what's wrong with them - and take everything rather literally. Which sometimes makes related stories absolutely odd.
#7
Nurse for an ophthalmologist here. Had a 21 year old new patient claiming to be completely blind from a sudden and severe glaucoma diagnosis from a previous unknown doctor. Would feel around while walking, tried to keep eyes rolled back into his head. The whole 9 yards. He said he is a famous YouTube rapper that is now unable to make videos or earn a living. I exclaimed to have heard of him before and very excitedly asked him to search and show me his YouTube channel on my phone so that I could subscribe. He took my phone out of my hand and effortlessly found the YouTube app and typed away in the search bar. Oh, and of course his eyes were back to normal and focused.
Image credits: sexyfoxx85
#8
Had a patient when I was an intern feigning blindness. She would constantly be playing on her smartphone, only furiously trying to hide it when someone from the care team came into her room. The best was when my attending one day strolled pst her room and threw his hand up in a highly exaggerated ‘hello’ wave. She started to throw her arm up to but caught herself half way through, then threw her hand back into her lap and pretended to be ‘staring’ off into nothing.
Image credits: SinisterlyDexterous
#9
My brother was an EMT for two years and he told me this:
People will try to use the ambulance as a means for transportation from Fulton to Oswego (because the hospital is in Oswego), by faking seizures. Sometimes when the head EMT guy was feeling fun and knew that the person was faking, he'd say something like "man it's weird that he's having seizures but not peeing himself". Apparently the person would kind of snap out of it for a second, weigh up the repercussions, then either pee themselves or stop faking. I thought that was hilarious.
Image credits: -Stammers-
It's interesting that in world history and culture, there are many cases when people, consciously or unconsciously, claimed to have some kind of illness, and it took serious efforts to dissuade them of this.
For example, the legendary play by the French playwright Moliere called "The Imaginary Invalid," or the novel "Catch 22" by the American writer Joseph Heller, the hero of which, the army officer, resorts to many means to avoid returning to war.
Well, sometimes people are just simply convinced that they are sick, often with other folks' personal insidious goals. It's quite enough to recall the scene from the "The Lord of the Rings" movie where the lying courtier Grima literally bewitched the King Théoden of Rohan, and it took the intervention of the wizard Gandalf to "cure" the king. But doctors, alas, are not magicians...
#10
I'm a nurse on a floor that deals with a lot of chronic and acute pain patients.
Most recent instance was this lady from a few weeks ago that was apparently splitting the Oxycodone we were giving her in half in her mouth and then when the nurse's backs were turned, she would stuff it in a pill jar. A night nurse caught her in the act and all of her s**t had to be searched. We found 20 half tablets of Oxycodone she had been stashing. She told us that she was "saving them for her family in case they need them because it's just so hard to get an Oxycodone prescription these days."
I had her a few days after that, and she was having some abdominal pain (STAT x-ray showed only gas. She just really needed to fart.) But she was screaming, claiming it was a 10, and making a huge f*****g scene. She DEMANDED Dilaudid through her IV, and she wanted it to be pushed fast. Huge red flag right there. She wanted the high, not the relief. Doc straight up said he wouldn't give her Dilaudid because she was already on so many opiates. She then demanded Lorazepam, still through her IV of course. Doc was like fine whatever, just one time and only a low end dose.
I was flushing her IV with normal saline first (to make sure her IV was patent) and she leans back and is like "OOOOoooo that's so much better already". Hadn't even given her the Lorazepam yet, smdh.
Image credits: strawberrytaint
#11
ER nurse. Bringing a patient back to a room who said he had kidney stones. I had him stop at the bathroom and get a urine sample. Dude comes out with with the specimen cup that literally has a piece of concrete in it. Looked him in the eye expecting some sort of joke.
He.
Was.
Serious.
I threw it away and walked his d*****s back to the waiting room to contemplate his stupidity.
Image credits: _Stamos
#12
Years ago I had a patient who had been rear-ended in an auto accident a few weeks before I saw her. She had a history of lupus. She was decked out in the usual "I'm crippled" paraphernalia (crutches, neck brace, elbow braces, wrist braces, knee braces) and could barely walk. I saw her a couple of times and she showed no improvement. One Saturday I was on call but had to take a 'back streets' route to the hospital because of an 'event' taking place on the main thoroughfare. I apparently drove through her neighborhood, because, wonders behold, there she was wearing old-lady spandex power walking down the sidewalk (holding weights in both hands). I did not call out to her.
Next week, she was back in clinic, with her "I'm crippled" getup on again. Hmmm. A few weeks later I got the subpoena for the deposition, and it all became clear.
Image credits: konqueror321
"Sometimes many such cases are associated with the so-called Munchausen syndrome," says Iryna Stasiuk, an expert in syndromic therapy from Odessa, Ukraine, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment here. "This syndrome, named after a literary character known for his tendency to tell lies nearly everywhere, describes situations when a person deliberately simulates or induces illness syndromes in themselves in order to receive treatment."
"The reason for such behavior lies rather in the mental plane - a person simply wants additional attention, care and sympathy from others, and if these are doctors and nurses, they are quite happy with this. By the way, often, if such a person is denied treatment or is declared cured, they may well turn to other specialists - with the same goal."
"There is also a variation of this syndrome - the so-called delegated syndrome, when people try to convince everyone that their children, parents or spouses have a disease. Admitting these 'patients' for sure. In this case, it's caused by a mental need to provide increased care for the 'patients' - even if they don't need this care at all," Irina says.
#13
Obligatory not a doctor, but I got a call from my son's school nurse when he was in 2nd grade, and the conversation went like this:
Nurse sounding upbeat & cheerful says, "your son wants to tell you his terrible news."
Son gets on the phone, says "Hi mom, I cut my finger off."
I ask him, "Where is your finger now?"
Son: "I put it back on."
I said, "Can I talk to the nurse?"
Nurse gets on the phone again, says, "Sounds serious, right?" I asked, "does he have a substitute teacher today?" Ahhhhh... yes. I told the nurse to let him know I will take him to the hospital for a shot for his finger, to which he says "I think it's OK. I glued it on really good."
Nurse kept him in the office for a bit to talk about scary changes in the classroom.
Image credits: cat9tail
#14
I don’t know why anyone would want to fake anything medical. Unconsciousness in particular. I got a compound fracture recently and called 911 on myself and was put on hold. Fun stuff. But got through and asked them to send help. Operator was a badass and kept asking me questions to *keep* me conscious.
The ambulance folks arrive, casually got out of the ambulance, walk up to me and then saw the bone sticking out of my body, and said, quote, “Oh! You’re actually hurt!”
YES! Did you think I called 911 because I spilled some lemonade??
Then it occurred to me that most of their calls must be horseshit. But to cause me even more confusion, I received close to a $2000 bill for the privilege of actual help and the ride to the hospital.
That ludicrous bill is no fault of the EMS - I’m very much appreciative of their existence and they don’t get nearly enough credit - but the best part of receiving that bill? The ambulance ride was roughly $1850. The fentanyl they gave me was $2.15.
Image credits: KedaZ1
#15
My mom was an emergency room nurse. Years ago they brought a prisoner from the local pen in who seemed to be unconscious. The guards were suspicious that he was faking it. They checked his vitals and everything seemed to be ok. The attending doctor tried poking him in the foot with something pointy, nothing. Then he got an idea, they took a rubber hose and inserted it in the back of his throat as if they were intubating him. That did the trick he sat up very quickly coughing and gagging.
Edit: Yes, sternum rub, got it.
Image credits: tomcod
So, when you read these stories, please try to perceive everything critically enough - in fact, what may look funny or absurd may well be a situation that actually requires medical intervention. Not, let's say, a surgeon or a dentist, but a psychoanalyst.
In any case, we're pretty much sure you'll find these tales quite interesting, so have a nice time reading, and maybe add your own stories of such kind in the comments below - if you have ever had to face or witness something similar too. The more interesting and informative the reading, the better!
#16
Not a doctor but a therapist. For some reason adolescents like faking DID (formerly multiple personality disorder). It's a pretty rare and debated diagnosis in our field. I've seen people fake it by mimicking how it's portrayed in movies and on tv. Red flags are them telling you, "I have multiple personality disorder" and, of course, not meeting the actual diagnostic criteria. Some people feel like the common diagnoses aren't big or special enough to accurately represent their struggles, so they cosplay something worse. Whatever you're working through is a big deal to us! If you feel like you have to fake or exaggerate your symptoms for your therapist, consider finding a different therapist.
**Editing to clarify my last sentence since I'm getting some aggressive replies:**
If you don't feel like you can be authentic with your therapist, continue searching until you find a therapist you feel comfortable with. Sometimes it's just not a good fit. It happens. You're not obligated to continue seeing a therapist you don't feel comfortable with. If you feel like you need to fake or exaggerate something to be taken seriously by a therapist, it's not a good fit. Continue searching until you find someone who takes you seriously.
Also, I'm not a solid resource for DID information. It's not a common diagnosis and my experience with it has been extremely limited. Stick to peer-reviewed information and experts in the field for the most accurate and up to date information.
Image credits: JessicaMessica
#17
Opthalmology technician. People pretend to be blind all the time. Go to check their eye pressure with the tonopen (a device you poke them DIRECTLY into the eye with) and they go WHAT THE F**K IS THAT THING!?!?!?!?!
Image credits: jmikk85
#18
4th year medical student
On my ER rotation and a trauma came in from a women that the had been arrested. During the drive the patient “banged” her head 4 times against the window of the police car and then went unresponsive.
She came to us with a bruise over her forehead and unresponsive. We all smelled bs but the patient was a great actor, didn’t even flinch during the digital rectal exam (which is standard for all patients that come in through the trauma bay). Though some of the nurses said that they caught her “peeking” at us when would leave the room.
We ended up getting a CT scan (which was normal) and was even considering intubating her to secure her airway when our attending finally walked over to her, opened her eye lids and held them open while telling her to wake up. Finally she started fighting to close her eyes and the jig was up. The doctor called her out and she proceeded to start screaming at us. She was much more pleasant when she was pretending to have a brain injury.
Image credits: footsiefried
#19
If someone is unconscious, make a fist and rub your knuckles against their sternum (chest bone). Put some pressure behind it and rub quickly up and down (up towards chin, down towards belly button). It's called a sternal rub and is incredibly painful, but won't harm the person. It very, very hard to completely ignore and continue with the ruse of faking being unconscious. The only more sure thing is asking your partner to hand you the eye needle to take some ocular fluid while they're passed out so they won't feel the pain of the needle in their eye.
* ETA - There's no ocular needle, at least not on an ambulance. We say that because not everyone knows that and they don't want to risk it.
* ETA 2 - RIP my inbox. Apparently the sternal rub isn't common practice anymore because people literally went too hard. Sorry! Also I feel old af now.
* ETA 3 - ETA is used on reddit to mean "Edited to add". Yes, I know it usually means "Estimated time of arrival".
Image credits: Tank_Girl_Gritty_235
#20
I went to emergency once with intense chest pain. The young (new) doctor I saw first listen to my chest and immediately concluded I had pericarditis but the supervising doctor decided I was faking it for d***s for some reason. The next morning I woke up to a psychologist in my room asking all sorts of random s**t when an orderly interrupted because the ultrasound guy was in and wanted to see me first thing (I think after talking to the first doc I saw). Turns out I had pericarditis and myocarditis and the dude wheeled me out himself and told them order an ambulance to take me to a hospital with a cardiac clinic.
Image credits: freeLightbulbs
#21
Sorta along the same idea. Working at a pharmacy we saw a guy come in to try and get a refill on some pain meds that had no refill. After pleading that his ear really hurt we told him again we couldn’t refill it. One of the other employees saw his step into a side hallway and take a pencil and JAM it forcefully into his ear repeatedly, drawing blood. He calmly left and went to the ER. He came back a few hours later with a prescription for pain meds.
Image credits: i_am_thewalrus
#22
Whenever the symptoms aren't there when the patient doesn't know they're being watched. I had someone fake a stroke recently and walked in on her walking around her room independently (after pretending to be limp on her left side, letting us take complete care of her and wiping her butt for her).
It was wild, y'all.
Image credits: GengarIsSex
#23
It’s kinda the opposite way round, but when I was little, on Christmas Day, I was sitting at the table and my stomach starting to hurt. A lot.
I was a good kid and never misbehaved but for some reason my mum thought I was exaggerating or faking so she told me to stop being silly and eat up. I couldn’t eat, I felt horrible and was in a lot of pain. My mum just would not believe me and thought I was trying to get attention.
About 5 more minutes of me crying and she realised something was wrong so called the doctor and put me on the sofa.
So, that was the Christmas I missed because my appendix had burst. I spent a couple of months in hospital due to complications with the surgery and missed both Christmas and my birthday. Apparently they had caught it just in time as it could very well had been fatal.
My family still donates what they can to the children’s wing of that hospital as that was the first of 3 times they saved my life.
Sorry it didn’t quite fit the topic, but reading some of these posts reminded me and thought I’d share. :)
Image credits: PastelCurlies
#24
Not a doctor but a paramedic. Tons of calls to the jail for inmates with “seizures”, I lift the arm over their face and let it go they’ll move it to prevent hitting their face or I’ll lightly brush their eyelashes and they’ll twitch to it.
Image credits: m240totheface
#25
Broke my leg five years ago. But the paramedics didn’t believe me and told me to stand up. They were very rude. I think they didn’t believe me because I only had a tiny fall, had had a bit of alcohol and it was a Saturday night. Also I was calm and not crying or showing pain (wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be)
After I was helped onto the stretcher(not by them) my leg bent in a way it shouldn’t, and they put a splint on and gave me gas and air. Couldn’t believe how rude they were. Later found out I have osteoporosis and that’s why it broke so easy.
Image credits: Ebonyrose2828
#26
Not a doctor, but doctors often think my family is faking. For an unknown reason, when there's something wrong with our organs, our white blood cell count doesn't go up. My younger sister got appendicitis when she was in her early teens. Crying from the pain, but blood work showed nothing was amiss. If it hadn't been for other tests and my dad's insistance on them, she might not have been treated in time. So they open her up and surprise! A gross appendix that was close to bursting.
My dad insisted because of an operation he had just had to remove his gall bladder. He was in so much pain that he was vomiting, could hardly walk. It had been building up for a while and he was pretty sure what it was. He went to the doctor, but blood work showed his white count was normal. My dad had to scream in agony on their table for ages before they finally gave in and took him to surgery. They go in, see a perfectly healthy looking gall bladder. They pull it out, cut it open... and sand spills out. Dry sand. We learned later that it had completely stopped working and totally filled with protein chains. It was removed before it started k*****g my dad in earnest.
So yes, people fake it, people lie... but do double check just in case.
Edit: Holy cow, OK, this is now my most upvoted comment! And my first awards! Thank you! These stories took place over a decade ago, so my details were sparce and sometimes incorrect. So, after double checking with dad: the stuff only looked like grains of sand. They were deformed trypsin protein chains. We learned this when dad was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called alpha-1 antitrypsin FM phenotype. It's not fun, his lungs and liver deteriorate over time because of incorrectly shaped proteins getting stuck in his liver cells and not making it to the lungs, to put it simply.
And yes, my dad is being studied! Every time he gets a biopsy doctors gather data because his phenotype is so rare.
Aaand I got a couple of details incorrect, it had been a while since this story was told to me. The gallbladder didn't actually look healthy; that was a tidbit from a different story (my father has had basically every organ removed that he can and still be alive). Turns out that my dad found out about the white count thing during his own appendectomy. So, later, when he was in pain again from his gallbladder this time, he made sure he went to the same doctor he had gone through that whole kerfuffle with and, by that point, my dad's severe pain was enough reason to operate and take a look. They found the most diseased looking gallbladder they had ever seen, full of sand. They estimated it hadn't functioned for years.
As for the white cell thing, there is a name for it that we've since found out that I didn't know about! But no one can remember it at the moment, sorry... And weirdly, can't find it on Google.
Then, this is all exacerbated by biliary disconesia. Very small, small duct work that is easily clogged. More pain.
And to top it all off, Dad was exposed to high levels of radiation as a child. This on top of winning that dumb genetic lottery that no one wants to win.
Thanks again for all your amazing comments and questions! But an exploded inbox is what I get for not getting on reddit all day. I'll try and answer some.
Image credits: Rosemarri
#27
Not a doctor, but I once had a nurse tell me something that’s stuck with me ever since.
I had a gallbladder attack when I was younger, and lemme tell you, that’s some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I was doubled over, vomiting bile, and unable to move. My mom took me to the ER at 1 am in the middle of a snowstorm.
As the nurse was doing my initial evaluation, she asked me the standard “on a scale of 1-10” pain question. I thought for a couple seconds, and told her “7 or 8. It hurts really, really bad”. She nodded knowingly, and told me “Got it, it hurts really bad. Most people who tell me 10 are lying. No one ever feels a 10”.
In hindsight, I’m not sure that’s the best practice for a nurse. Still, after seeing d**g seeking patients myself, I understand her frustration. They ended up giving me morphine, which brought that number down quite a bit.
EDIT: I want to clarify my (or rather the nurse’s) comment. People can definitely feel a “10” on the pain scale, and I don’t want to invalidate your experience if you’ve felt that. I think the point is that if you do feel a “10”, the medical providers will probably know without having to ask. Conversely, if an otherwise lucid and calm patient replies with “10”, they might not be telling the truth.
Image credits: cynical_enchilada
#28
I saw a father and his son wink when I was turning to face them again when I was done writing a note to stay home from school. That's pretty much it, "faking it" is a hard call to make in general.
Image credits: anon
#29
We have a guy that comes into the ER all the time faking seizures. Best actor I’ve ever seen. Sternal rub and he doesn’t flinch. Last time it was so bad he got intubated and right as they pushed the meds he stopped and said “ahhh that’s the good stuff”. Welp now we gotta tube you dude. Problem is he’s a drunk who falls a lot so he could in theory really be seizing. Biggest rule of medicine is even fakers get sick sometimes.
Image credits: cbelle4
#30
"If someone is truly unconscious, their thumb always wiggle"
Just say that out loud to yourself.
Image credits: f__h
