Diagnoses you never thought you'd see?

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What's the most unusual patient you've ever had? I've had a couple--one was a woman whose admit orders included that she was NOT to have any food from home. They suspected that her husband was POISONING her.

The other was a woman who was a former LPN with a textbook case of Munchausen's syndrome. There was really nothing wrong with her but she kept insisting (moaning, actually) that she was SO sick. Very weird.

Specializes in Trauma Surgical ICU.

Herpesviral Encephalitis in a 95 year old

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

Accidental ingestion of Tide.

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Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.

chicken pox encephalitis in a 23 year old new kindergarten teacher. Varicella vax was relatively new at the time. She didn't realize that she never had chicken pox when younger, caught it from one of her students who was sent to school with a fever in the prodromal stage (day before the blisters appeared). Mom thought she could get away with giving a dose of Tylenol, send the kid to school and go to work. Didn't work out so well...especially when the health department was able to identify who transmitted it to the teacher.

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Specializes in Allergy/Immunology.
Having worked labor and delivery for many years, I have seen many anomolies. We had a cyclops (single eye in forhead) and a mermaid (different hospitals!) Thank God we had so very many healthy kids.
omg, a mermaid & cyclops?! Wow...
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Wow no one saw the iud on an x ray in 30 years?

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Specializes in Critical Care.

VATER syndrome. 1987. Had she been more much earlier they wouldn't have know what to do. 49 surgeries later, the little girl grew up to be me and I graduate in Dec w my RN! :-)

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

SJS, Serotonin Syndrome, and Werncike-Korsakoff's Encephalopathy, as well as 2 cases of Adrenal insufficiency/

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STDs in a 2 year old:o:o:o

Sad. I take it Social Services paid a visit.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
I'm assuming this child was sexually abused...that's usually what this means.

Could it not be transmitted from mother to child during childbirth? I realize STD testing is usually done during pregnancy, and if found, they do C-section. But, if not known about, or baby born unexpectedly, things like that..

Maybe I'm just being an optimist, but I would hope more cases would be from ignorance vs pedophilia...:(

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Munchausens is a pretty common one. Leech therapy is one I thought I wouldn't see but have a few times.

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"Sep 12 by lindseylpn Flesh eating bacteria, cat scratch fever "

I had cat scratch fever as a kid, I remember my lymph nodes swelled a lot.

One I haven't seen here is trichinosis, my neighbor had it about 15 years ago. No one knew what it was and the doctors couldn't figure it out. He almost died, lost tons of weight became invalid for months. The parasite basically ate all his muscles and was starting to go after his organs.

He has a picture album that is interesting documenting the stages.

Then one day they decided to test for it and it came back positive. He took some anti parasite drug (not sure what) and he was back to normal in a month.

Also here where I live there is a disease that isn't too uncommon called Rat Lung Worm. I've known people to die (well they killed themselves from the pain), some end up in comas with brain damage, and some get it and nothing bad happens but a headache and then it goes away.

I live in rural Hawaii.

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He got the trichinosis from eating raw mongoose.

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