Empower the people with medical knowledge!

not a patient, but a guy i knew that was always looking for sympathy (and apparently owned a medical dictionary) told the group of us very grimly one night that he only had a few weeks left to live as his ovarian cancar was now terminal

I would be in shock of the patient being able to say the name of that disease, lol.

Working as a research tech we suspected a study participant was running down the list of potential side effects & reporting them in the hopes of being medically discharged due to adverse experience with full stipend. He came up to complain of severe dysmenorrhea. The nurse had to step out to refrain from laughing.


I, with a straight face, asked him if he accurately filled out the medical and personal information packet? He assured me he did. Told him I needed to get the principal investigator (MD). He was ultimately dropped & banned for false reporting AE's. He was told either he was a rather unique male with a uterus who lied on his medical information questionnaire or lying about subjective side effects.

My aunt took med ABC for her 'hypertension' and med XYZ for her 'high blood pressure'. No way, shape or form of explanation could convince her of the one same diagnosis. After all, 'that's what on the pill bottles'.

Also, altho she was a BID insulin-dependent diabetic, her 'doctor told her she could eat a donut a day', and she 'could have two a day if she missed a day', and 'three a day if she missed another day', etc. Again, useless to argue.

I work LTC; many of my pts don't use computers. Their pearl-of-wisdom was the National Enquirer!

Still sounds better than GonnorheaherpasyphilAIDS

My mother, God rest her soul, lived life according to the National Enquirer also. If they printed it, it must be true! She also preferred any old wive's tale, instead of modern medicine.

That is funny!

Besides the National Enquirer and all those other gossip papers in the checkout aisle, my mom would read my nursing textbooks. It got so bad that I had to HIDE my books under my bed up in my attic bedroom (while I was still at home). Going up to the attic was a workout for her, and boy, she was mad for a while.

I did get her subscriptions to those papers one year. She was thrilled with one of the best gifts I ever got her. She was happily empowered!!!

I think every family has one or two of these members in their family. My mother In law would tell me she doesn't take her b/p meds everyday because she only had high blood pressure on certain days and didn't want to over medicate herself. Her daughter told me once that ibuprofen and Motrin were two completely different medication and just because I was a nurse practitioner I didn't know everything.

I had a great aunt who would "forget" to tell doctors what other specialists prescribed at one point she was on albuterol, Proventil, Ventolin, Inderal and propanolol. This was before Rx plans cross checked prescriptions when filled as she filled each doctor's scripts at a different pharmacy.

She stills suffers from chronic polypharmacy,which is most likely going to ultimately be her demise.

we nurses encountered these types of patients more often that we care to, however, we just go right along with the program as we grin and bare it

LOVE it!!!