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 Emergency, Nursing Management, Auditing.

During my psych clinical in nursing school, there was a patient who had taken so much colloidal silver that her skin was grey, head to toe. She literally looked like the walking dead! :lol2:

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Specializes in FNP, Peds, Epilepsy, Mgt., Occ. Ed.

Hypothyroid 2-year-old.

Infant with rat bites.

Munchausen's by proxy.

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6 week old born with second-stage syphilis.

:(

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Young woman with cancer had a hemi-pelvectomy. In other words, the right half of her pelvis and right leg were amputated.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Home Health.

During my OB rotation nursing school, I had patient who delivered a baby with ambiguous genitalia.

I also had a patient who had elephantitis.

Oh, and the 1st code I ever saw, something in the pt's abdomen ruptured, and his testicles started to swell. A lot. One of the nurses actually had to keep pressure on them so they didn't rupture. Seriously. She had to do that for the entire code (which ended up being like 30-40 minutes). Never expected to see that.:uhoh21:

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Specializes in L/D, and now Occupational Health.

Full term Abdominal pregnancy delivered by c/s with no complications, it was one of the wildest things I have ever seen !!

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Specializes in Telemetry & Obs.

Pt in her 80s with sudden lady partsl bleeding. They found a "forgotten" IUD that had to be 30-40 years old. Eldest daughter said she vaguely remembered her mom getting one of the earliest ones in the 60s she thought.

Like another poster, I had a young straping hunk of a young guy with acute chest pain, etc.....docs thought it was drug-induced. Tox screens were negative. He ended up on the heart transplant list :(

Strangest thing I've seen lately was elephantitis d/t chronic venous stasis of the LEs that the wife had been "treating" with cinnamon at home. Add that to the smell of his ESRD:uhoh21:

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Specializes in obstetrics(high risk antepartum, L/D,etc.

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.

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Specializes in med/surg, psych, public health.

Young female with Dextra Cardia Situs Inversus Totalis

Young male pt. with Diabetes Insipidus :smiletea2: & psych dx of IED :angryfire (very interesting & challenging pt. to say the least.)

Several pts. with Pica

Middle aged male with Hidradenitis Suppurativa

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Specializes in Med/surg/tele/OR.
Full term Abdominal pregnancy delivered by c/s with no complications, it was one of the wildest things I have ever seen !!

how does this even happen

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Specializes in NICU.

If it implants somewhere with a rich blood supply, it can happen. I've heard tell of ectopics going pretty far attached to the liver.

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Eosinophilic esophagitis-- my daughter has this. I had never heard of it before her diagnosis. Basically you are allergic to all food or most food and survive on elemental formula for life in the more severe cases.

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