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So here is a short and sweet one. I was still in school when this happened. My patient had just come to me in PACU and we were going down the myriad of questions. When we got to allergies it went like this. Do you have any allergies? She says "pepper" and we asked and what happens when you eat it or get around it? This I swear was her response "it makes me sneeze". I thought I was going to fall in the floor. I really was worthless for the next few minutes while I gathered up every ounce of energy that I had to not laugh.
just this week i had a patient tell me they were allergic to lisinopril. when i asked what kind of reaction she had she told me "it lowers my blood pressure". durrrrrrr
I used to tell people that I was allergic to Benadryl cuz it made me super cranky. Actually, it really does, and I only take it if I really need to sleep or when I have an allergic reaction to something, like Lamictal.
Grace90, my mom is like that, only a bit worse. She has the "paradoxical" reaction to Benadryl -- instead of making her drowsy, she's ready to climb the walls! She can't sit still, can't sleep. It's terrible.
My all time favorite "allergy" however was the guy who told us he was allergic to normal saline. His family wanted us all written up because we flushed his heplock with 3 cc's of NS. His reaction? Once, he got fluid overloaded with NS . . . Uh-huh, so now we can't flush his IV with 3 cc's . . .
I had a pt tell me they were allergic to Valium because it made her sleepy!
Another, allergic to Aspirn because it made her stomach hurt. Had a long talk about the difference between side effects and allergies!
My favorite was doing a data base assesment, you know, did you ever have the mumps, etc.
Got down to scarlet fever. "Yup, had scarlet fever, got married and went into the Army all in the same year. Any of those could have killed me!"
I work in a family medicine/alternative medicine clinic. I had a patient come into the office the other day for the sole purpose of telling me that she is "terribly allergic" to Flagyl and she wanted make sure we noted that in her chart. I asked her what kind of reaction she had to it. She said "it gave me a yeast infection."
P.S. I did explain the difference between "allergic reactions" and "side effects."