The human body is an extremely complicated system that does five billion things at once in the exact right way to keep us alive. It’s kind of a miracle that any of us are here at all when you think about it.
While we common folk aren’t expected to know everything about our bodies, we should know the basics, but some of us can’t even manage that. As highlighted in an AskReddit post titled, “Medical professionals, what is the stupidest misconception a patient has had about the human body?”
Emerging from within.
“Sometimes in pregnancy women’s bellies can gain a little bit of hair, I assume from extra hormones etc. During a routine prenatal check a partner asked if it was the fetus’ hair poking through her skin.”
Making assumptions.
“I’ve had male patients in my audiology clinic tell me they have fallopian tube issues. Perhaps I shouldn’t assume they mean eustachian tube issues, but I do.”
Back into circulation.
“I offered a diabetic a tissue after doing a finger prick to mop the 2 drops of blood on his finger. He looked at me like I was an absolute idiot, said ‘you don’t know very much do you’ and sucked the blood off his finger. Then spend the next 5min ‘educating’ me that because he was a diabetic, he needed all the blood he had. Therefore he needed to ‘put it back into his body’ rather than wasting it by putting it on a tissue.”
Nothing to fear.
“One time I had to explain to a parent that the ‘bump’ on their child’s foot they were worried about was an ankle.”
Momentary panic.
“Baby came out face down … father freaked out his child was born without a face. We had a good laugh after.”
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Location, location.
“I’m in the mental health field but I met with a client who was worried that if their relative had a heart transplant would the relative still love and remember them. The logic being that the feeling of love lives in the heart.”
I wonder why.
“Pharmacist here. I had a patient call me and ask me why their medication wasn’t working anymore after they had stopped taking it.”
Are you sure?
“I can’t begin to tell you how many dudes have argued with me that they’ve had hysterectomies. And I’m like you mean appendectomy? And they are absolutely adamant that they had a hysterectomy.”
Doing it how it was taught.
“I asked an elderly patient to show me how she gives her insulin. She said, I need an orange. I said why? She said well, I draw up my insulin in the syringe, inject it in the orange and eat it! That’s how the Dr showed me to do insulin!”
Generational info.
“Had a mother ask if it was true that the soft spot of her baby’s head was ‘like a whale blow hole’ that he could breathe out of. Apparently her own mother had told her that.”
One shot.
“I’m a dentist and the thing we get all the time that I hate is parents not caring about their child’s decay because ‘they’re just baby teeth’. Losing baby teeth early causes all sorts of problems aside from the pain and trauma but in addition to that I often have to explain to parents that the adult teeth that erupt at age 6 are meant to last forever. They’re always oblivious.”
Excited about dinner.
“Clinical pharmacist here. Before modern glucometer uploading, I was on the phone with an albeit older diabetic patient asking them to list their glucose readings. As I’m documenting the readings, the numbers start to get very strange and unexpected… 1276, 26, 750, etc. The patient had seamlessly, without any indication or request, started reading me the nutrition facts off the back of the bottle of pasta sauce he had for dinner.”
Opposite ends.
“I used to take retinal photos to look for diabetic retinopathy. When I would call to make appointments, more than once a patient said ‘Well I just saw the proctologist.’ No sir, these are retinal photos, not rectal photos.”
The same, but different.
“My dad doesn’t have a clue on anything that happens in the body. I told him I work in a tissue lab and he asked ‘oh are you developing new Kleenex?’ When I told him that I work with body tissue this man really said ‘oh, I don’t think I have that. I just use Kleenex’.”
Not the right places.
“I taught a college-level health ed class, and the misconceptions were truly astonishing. Students wondered why household bleach could not be injected into a vein to cure HIV, and questioned why alcoholics were not immune since alcohol is an antiseptic.”
No bite or bark, yet.
“I had a father of a baby absolutely beside himself because his newborn baby had no teeth.”
Character customization.
“Working in an ER as a nurse practitioner. I had a patient’s granddaughter, who was pregnant, ask me if she dyed her hair would it also dye her baby’s hair. Made my day!”
Safe and sound.
“I’m not a doctor, but my sister works in a hospital. No, you don’t need to go to the ER for a papercut. You won’t bleed out.”
Time regrows all limbs.
“[…] a doctor [was] telling the person they were about to lose a finger. […] the person seemed way too ok with it, so the doctor asked how they were handling it so well and the person genuinely told them that it won’t be too bad because at least fingers grow back.”
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