Patients' "home remedies"? What have you seen - Page 8

I have had several older gentlemen tell me they used WD40 for arthritis.

I had a pt try to cure his chest pains with home accupuncture...he later came to the hospital and needed an emergent bypass.

Probably the reason the CMS disallowed it's use in skilled facilities. I've had many patients (all with schizophrenia) who cleaned themselves with bleach on a regular basis.

A young mother pouring her urine into her baby's ear to "cure" an ear infection.

I learned that Dakin's is bleach when our thorasic surgeon was rounding and cleaning a lot of post-chest tube wounds and we ran out of dakin's and I had to go to pharmacy to get some more.

They were also out but the very smart and very resourceful pharmacist was able to constitute some more after raiding the house keeper's closet. It's legit!

One patient told me he wasn't going to take his warfarin and instead was going to take some supplement he found on the internet made out of avocado pits. I told his nurse so she could go in there and do some teaching...

Related to sugar in wounds: I heard from a wound care nurse that brown sugar can be used to treat a pseudomonas infected wound. The idea is that the sugar sends the pseudomonas into a feeding frenzy and while it's feeding it doesn't reproduce. Eventually it feeds until it dies without reproducing, therefor the wound gets better.

I've heard of treating a earache by blowing cigar smoke into the affected ear.

I got a stye on my eyelid when I was a kid and my father said you can fix that by peeing on your finger and rubbing the pee on the stye. Surprisingly it worked.

I've also heard of peeing on your feet for athlete's foot, but I've never tried that. I've had athlete's foot before but treated it with medicine.