Favorite "Lay Terms" For Diagnoses

[OleMissRN]

Some of my favorite mispronunciations or "shortening" of a diagnosis by patients and/or family members:

The Gouch - Gout

The High Blood/Low Blood - Hypertension/Hypotension

The High Sugar - Diabetes (sometimes they actually mean hyperglycemia...but usually mean Diabetes)

The Bad Lung - COPD

Also included are the times that people completely ignore the ventilator in the room and the ETT in the pt's mouth and ask me why Johnny won't talk to them.

Anybody have any others that they found humorous?

[onetiredmomma]

My all time favorite is mammyogram!

[mentalhealthRN]

Not sure if this really fits the "funny way patients pronounce things" theme but I read the responses and was reminded of this funny story. I had a family member who kindly provided me with her husbands list of meds on his admit to the inpatient psych unit. She had it very organized, typed and next to each med name she had what he took it for. -- so I read this lonnnnnng list of meds and indications and get to this one and had to read it a few times and when I finally read it aloud I burst out laughing. "colace-- 42godapoopoo"

Now all the others were things like -- Diovan: High blood pressure, Vicodin: back pain, etc. ......but this one was in "code". LOL -- colace-- 4 2 go da poo poo....ya gotta say it out loud! lol I was laughing for a while on that one.

[LegzRN]

Patient: What's in the bag? "Saleen?"

LegZRN: Yes... normal "saleen" solution

[ebear, BSN, RN]

"cooterman" for Coumadin

"tiger-tol" for Tegretol

[etaoinshrdluRN]

"Sorry, my parts-heimers is kicking in again."

I've heard it described as "sommmathetimers."

[SweetLikeSugar]

When I was a fairly new RN, I had a direct admission come in from her GI doc's office. Direct admission = no H&P, no orders, nothing. The patient states her doctor told her she would be "PON for her ursupp the next day." WTH?? I literally started sweating because I had no idea what she was talking about. It took me a minute or two to figure out that she was to be "NPO for an ERCP." She had a relative that had recently had a CABG and heard the nurses pronouncing it "cabbage" and she thought that all abbreviations were just pronounced phonetically.

[LPNweezy]

ohcomeon said:

My favorite is "Alltimers"

hahahah my favorite deviation of Alzheimer's is 'Old-timers' 

[LPNweezy]

etaoinshrdluRN said:

On the nurse side, almost nobody is able to correctly pronounce "metoprolol."

this is how I say it MEH-TRO-PRO-LOL I know its wrong. I think its METO-PRO-LOL. 

[ebear, BSN, RN]

it is, Weezy! 

[sevensonnets]

My new female admit told me she'd had her "prostate removed." Couldn't shake her story even after a detailed explanation of how that couldn't possibly be true. Later she apologized and said "Honey, I was wrong. I think it was my husband that had his prostrate taken out."

[llerkl, ADN]

epidermal=epidural 

[KJStarling]

Once a patient told me he had "roaches in the liver." I really had to keep my poker face straight that day!