What was the MOST ridiculous thing a patient came to the ER for?

And did you have to treat them?

I am just curious. Your stories always seem to either crack me up or shake my head in amazement.

Thanks for sharing ?

[AmyRN303, BSN, RN]

TheGooch said:

Thanks, I actually felt stupid going to Urgent Care but not so much when I left. A person can be allergic to their bites from what I've read.

When I delivered my oldest child one July, I had three or four large welted purple mosquito bites on my leg....one of the nurses asked me repeated questions about my home life...when I realized what she was getting at, I ended up telling her all about my other allergies. Kinda did look like I got pushed down a flight of stairs. My daughter is horribly allergic to mosquitoes too. When she was 2, I took her to the pediatrician because her eye swelled shut from two bites. New Hampshire mosquitoes are the size of Eagles.

[EricaAngela90]

Pregnancy test

[NICUmiiki, DNP, NP]

Needed a ride and the ER was pretty close to his house.

[WannaBNursey, ADN, ASN, RN]

Had a patient come in with no complaint at all, she got kicked out of the local homeless shelter because she got into a fight there and she wanted us to keep her in the hospital to sleep. It's really sad, but if you need three hots and a cot at least make up a pretty good complaint!

[twozer0, NP]

I've had several crazy complaints but one of the best has to be the young girl who came in for a pregnancy test. Now I know others have said this is also the dumbest thing but this particular pregnancy test takes the cake. She came in with a purse full of positive home tests but her boyfriend refused to believe her. He told her to go to the hospital and get a "blood test" just to be sure. I looked at her and calmly told her to dump her purse full of positive tests in front of her boyfriend and explained to her that she is infact pregnant. The blood test is no different from the OTC ones you can buy and if you have 5+ positive tests, I'm pretty sure the writing is on the wall. At this point I told her to leave as there is nothing we could do since there was no real medical complaint.

[No Stars In My Eyes]

buckeyeRNED said:

An itch on the bottom of her foot. Seriously.

My goodness, but she might have passed out and died!

[emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

buckeyeRNED said:

An itch on the bottom of her foot.

Seriously.

By squad, right?

[buckeyeRNED]

emtb2rn said:

By squad, right?

No she was actually there visiting another patient and decided to check herself in. I later heard her complaining about how little we did to help her.

[chylerlove]

jyoung1950 said:

As a matter of fact, in the wee hours of Monday morning, I woke up with severe pain on my left side front and back and radiating down my groin. I also had alot of pressure to urinate but when I tried could only void a very small amount. Also had vomiting and nausea.

Well, the pain would not subside. Any Tylenol I tried to take for it was vomited up.

Finally after 3 hours of this, I dragged my aching body to the car and drove down to the ER at 4:30 in the morning. I could not understand what could be causing the pain and was, understandably, afraid.

There was blood in my urine and they did a catscan, but the nurses had already figured out I had a kidney stone ("doing the kidney stone dance").

They put an IV in me for fluid and pain medicine and when I was awake enough let me go home with vicodin and suppositories for nausea and vomiting. Doc instructed me to see a urologist in the next couple days.

I hope the ER staff didn't think me coming down with a KS was silly. I live alone and just have myself to depend on. They sure did help me out - the pain was unbearable.

Just a little anecdotal story.

That's not silly! I get at least one KS person per shift and they are always in excruciating pain, it usually takes multiple doses of IV morphine or dilaudid for them to relax. It never hurts to come get checked out, pain is the body's way of letting you know something isn't right. Not to mention the N/V that usually accompanies KS is usually unbearable from what I've seen. Anyways, just wanted you to know that it is a very common thing and nothing to be embarrassed about. Glad you got taken care of ?

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

buckeyeRNED said:

An itch on the bottom of her foot.

Seriously.

Oh what humanity does! It's incredibly wacky.

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

WKShadowRN said:

Had a lady request medics to take her to denny's

AAAAAHHHH!

[PurpleLover]

I just didn't want to go home