ER- HELP: Dumbest reason people go to ER

I've never worked in an ER. I've worked in a community health center where we got LOTS of walk-ins, some complaints very similar to what's posted here:

- lots of roaches/bugs in ears

- "I was working and fell and busted my eye on a metal pipe"
AKA "I got drunk, got into a fight, and got my butt kicked."

- CC: "I'm impotent. I think I need Viagra."
"What makes you think that?"
"I can't get an erection." (Turns out the guy was having sex like 4 times a day or something. Give it a chance to recuperate!)

- The female patient who INSISTED that we check her prostate, because "there's something wrong with it." No matter how much we explained that women don't have prostates just like men don't have a uterus, she kept insisting.

- "I have a headache." AKA "I slept with a hooker, I think I have an STD, and I don't want to tell you that." (That one is kinda sad, actually.)

LOL with a bruise to her leg for 3 days. She had hit it on a night table. What did her family think was going to happen? They even had her brought in by EMS.

Little boy brought in at 230 am for throwing up once-A WEEK AGO!

EMS brought in a guy claiming to have a seizure after cops tried to arrest him for leaving the scene of an accident. He would lay on the bed and whenever staff went by he would wiggle his right arm and start screaming "I'm having a seizure!". The doc went in, told him he was XXX and sent him on to jail.

My pet peeve are people who come in for a myriad of complaints like, "Umm, I feel sick and my back hurts and I had a fever a couple of days ago. I think I might puke and my blood pressure was weird looking when I checked it at the pharmacy. Plus I have anxiety and I'm out of my pills." Whenever they start in on these symptoms that are all over the board then I know 9 xs out of ten they are drug seeking.

Yesterday I had a lady come in to triage for "being stressed out". Hello fuzzy, who isn't?

Well, lupin stole some of my thunder, there... but here's what I've got.

Waaaaaaay back in the day when I was a volunteer at the ER front desk, a 45 year old woman walked in with a complaint of bruises on her shins. I asked how she received the bruises, and she said she had been walking around in the dark and ran into her glass coffee table. The class did not break, she had no lacs, but thought she "ought to get it checked out, just in case."
A few minutes after she came in, a frantic father ran in screaming for us to get a wheelchair and get out to the car for his daughter who had an obvious tib/fib fracture. (I stilll can't believe he drove her to the hospital himself...there was blood everywhere.) So, anyhow, we get the daughter in, triage her, and wheel her right back into a treatment room.
The woman with the bruises on her shins came up to the desk to complain that she had "gotten there first" and that "everyone should be made to wait their turn."


Huh?

I triaged a guy one night, no psych dx or anything, dressed nice, got ambulance ride. When I asked him why he came in he held his hand down (veins appear) then he holds them up (veins dissappear) absolutely nothing else to complain of. VSS. We had a particularly brutal Doctor on that night, it was great.

wow! That's a good one... wonder what they were doing... huh? LOL LOL!

we had a lady come in and showed us her mucus.. which was white and thin.. she brought it in a tissue .. disgusting.. she saved it for us... blech

dachlady2, I know this is a month after you have probably written the essay, but I want a copy please; just for laughs. thanks. good luck.

WOW! that all I'll say.

Oh that is Halarious.

Admitted for observation??? WOW! Must have had great insurance.