Seriously?!?! You gotta be kidding me!

[~Mi Vida Loca~RN]

Ok here is another thread we can hopefully get going for nurse veterans and young nurses to see what's to come. What are some of the craziest chief complaints or diagnosis you have seen. I don't want to limit it to chief complaint because that tends to be associated with only emergency.

I could name so many but to start the 2 that made me roll my eyes and say Seriously??

Pt came in with a complaint of "excessive anal sweating" stated that his butt crack had profuse sweating and it was impeding his life. Even after D/C came back hours later for same thing. I can not tell you how hard it was to keep a straight face during that triage.

Another patient came in OFTEN with complaints of feeling faint after excessive masturbation. :| His last D/C he was instructed to cut back on masturbation but apparently it was still an issue and he would come in for near syncope.

[Avid reader]

Bicycle pump where the sun don't shine. At least the guy flat out admitted why he stuck it there and didn't try to come up with some crazy wild tale that no one would have believed anyway.

Was he suffering from erectile dysfunction or had an inflated opinion of himself?

[Avid reader]

We had someone come in one night, saying that the bald spot on his head looked strange and he was worried.

Maybe they hadn't been introduced before!

[Avid reader]

Patient presented during a blizzard. Complaint: erectile dysfunction x 12 years. We did not solve his problem during that very brief visit.

Can you find anything in a blizzard? How cold was it?

[CelticGoddess, BSN, RN]

Back in my former life, when I was a rad tech, I had to X-ray an elderly woman (pleasant confused) for abdominal pain x1 weeks (per report). Anytime any of us asked her about her symptoms (length of time, location, etc) she just complained about the thief who stole her teeth. Her dentures had been missing for a few weeks.

At the time, policy was to take a KUB (kidney/ureters/bladder) before sending a patient with severe abdominal pain to CT. Good thing too: I got a great picture of her dentures in the region of her bladder. She had shoved them up her lady parts to keep them safe from all the thieves she lived with, and promptly forgot them.

Also had to x-ray a patient who was admitted for surgical removal of a foreign object of the member. Fish hook very firmly planted (inserted?) in urethra.

At least they weren't hamsters, huh?

And I still can't forget the man who presented to the ED with c/o a headache x 48 hours that just wouldn't go away. He admitted to having been drinking heavily over the weekend (he presented on a sunday afternoon). Pain was in the back of his head. MD started to look at his head and determined the cause of the pain was the .22 slug lodged in his scalp. He was sent to CT to determine how bad it was. It barely dented the skull. He and his "friend" had an argument after a night of drinking at a local bar and his "friend" shot him in the back of the head as he walked away. He was fine. They removed the bullet, kept him over night and he went home. My husband (who is a CT tech) told me about this one.

[amoLucia]

You just can't make this stuff up!!!

Makes for good TV fodder, like that oldie but goodie "1000 Ways To Die".

[Avid reader]

Back in my former life, when I was a rad tech, I had to X-ray an elderly woman (pleasant confused) for abdominal pain x1 weeks (per report). Anytime any of us asked her about her symptoms (length of time, location, etc) she just complained about the thief who stole her teeth. Her dentures had been missing for a few weeks.

At the time, policy was to take a KUB (kidney/ureters/bladder) before sending a patient with severe abdominal pain to CT. Good thing too: I got a great picture of her dentures in the region of her bladder. She had shoved them up her lady parts to keep them safe from all the thieves she lived with, and promptly forgot them.

Talk about a biting pain!!

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Years (decades) ago when I was working Med/Surg, I got a patient from the ER with a diagnosis of "decub". The charge nurse "took report" while I set up the room, and when the patient arrived, he was lying prone on the gurney. When we lifted the sheet of of him, he had an enormous dressing covering his entire posterior, or most of it, in the perfect shape of a toilet seat. The history was this: He lived with his sister-in-law, who called 911 because she was irritated that he'd been in their home's only bathroom for four days and four nights. She'd been shoving valium and food (presumably flat food) under the door. When EMS came, they found him sitting on the toilet with the toilet seat partially embedded in his buttocks. When they got him off the toilet, the tissue was necrotic.

We had this rabbity little female intern -- the kind that is really, really smart, but has no social skills and graduated from high school early, went through college in two years and thusly was an MD before she was 20. We got the patient comfortable in bed and Bunny (not really her name) asked him what brought him to the hospital.

"I sat on the toilet. For four days. And four nights. And my sister-in-law got mad and called the cops."

"Why were you sitting on the toilet for so long?"

"Looking for God."

Without even pausing for a second, Bunny followed up that question with "Did you find him?"

That guy was in our unit for months, getting that wound debrided with sharp instruments, packed with wet to dry gauze every shift and IV antibiotics. It was horrible. But I still remember (with my blackest nurse humor) the horrified looks from new interns and agency nurses who had to change that dressing for the first time after loudly complaining that "decub" wasn't much of a reason for someone to be in the hospital!

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Reason I was given was because the doc didn't want to have to go down to the med surf unit.

Really -- how far away was the Med Surf unit? It could be a couple of hours drive if you don't work right on the ocean!

[~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN]

Really -- how far away was the Med Surf unit? It could be a couple of hours drive if you don't work right on the ocean!

I know, who wouldn't want to work on the med surf unit.

Moving to the south I had to learn to decipher a lot of chief complaints. Like "Done fell out" In our EPIC you can actually type in DFO in the chief complaint and it will populate Syncope.

Had a patient come in stating her "Pantheritis" was acting up. She legit thought that was what it was called.

Also had a woman come in for a cyst on her lower labia, now generally it's not uncommon for patients to come to the ER for cysts. Apparently it was getting in the way of sex with her boyfriend and her. Of course they needed the golden turkey sandwiches and pop as soon as they got there but what really irked me about that one was when I went to D/C her. She stated her boyfriend and her would need a cab voucher to get home. I asked how they got to the ER and she stated via ambulance. I shouldn't have been surprised since people take ambulances for absurd reasons, but that night really got to me.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

The chief complaint: "My wife fainted."

My dear friend's late husband was an ER physician. Ed loved to tell of the Halloween night he was stuck in the ER working during a thunderstorm. The triage desk was in front of floor to ceiling glass windows (and glass double doors) with a full view of the parking lot, and lightning kept striking and lighting up the whole area over and over. Ed was at the triage desk drinking coffee and chatting with that ER's favorite cops when he happened to glance out into the parking lot to see something he couldn't believe. He thought he saw a guy walking toward the ER carrying a woman, and with an axe blade sticking out of his head. Halloween prank, right?

Ed called everyone's attention to the parking lot and the very next lightning bolt illuminated the sight for all to see: a guy walking toward the ER, axe sticking out of his head, carrying a woman. He walks into the ER, hands off the woman to one of the cops, and says "My wife fainted when she saw this," gesturing to his head. It turns out he'd been outside splitting wood when the head of the axe flew off and rebounded off the shed and hit him in the head. He knew he was bleeding and suspected he might have to go to the hospital, so he ran into the house to get his wife to drive him. She took one look at him and fainted.

The X-rays showed the blade had penetrated his skull right between the two hemispheres of the brain and had done very little damage to the brain. After having the axe blade surgically removed, he made a full recovery although his skull (and his hair pattern) weren't the same afterward.

[KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN]

Years (decades) ago when I was working Med/Surg, I got a patient from the ER with a diagnosis of "decub". The charge nurse "took report" while I set up the room, and when the patient arrived, he was lying prone on the gurney. When we lifted the sheet of of him, he had an enormous dressing covering his entire posterior, or most of it, in the perfect shape of a toilet seat. The history was this: He lived with his sister-in-law, who called 911 because she was irritated that he'd been in their home's only bathroom for four days and four nights. She'd been shoving valium and food (presumably flat food) under the door. When EMS came, they found him sitting on the toilet with the toilet seat partially embedded in his buttocks. When they got him off the toilet, the tissue was necrotic.

We have just such patients in LTACH from time to time. Most commonly they are sick, obese and already weakened poor souls living alone or with someone even weaker than they are, so if they accidentally got stuck in toilet, nobody is able to help, sometimes till a postman wonders why nobody picks up mail. They often get sepsis, ARF, schiatic nerve injury and all other trimmings, and so hang in "not bad enough for ICU, not good enough for anything else" condition for months.

Caring for these people makes me sad. No human being deserves THAT sort of pain.

[prmenrs, RN]

Pt. came in to the Surgical clinic for a 6 wk reg post-op check up. Every thing seemed fine until the pt. asked the resident, "I was wondering about this thing on my back. You guessed it, someone had forgotten to remove the Bovie pad from his back. Resident calmly said, "Oh, it's about time for that to come off."