If you’re sick or injured, you should go see a doctor . That should be a given, but some people still won’t go to the doctor , not when they can just self-medicate.
The only problem is, some of the self-medicators out there really don’t know what they’re doing. As the medical professionals of Reddit have shared , people will stick all sorts of things in their bodies before admitting they need a doctor .
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“As an EMT- Basic student I responded to a man who called 911 complaining of a insect crawling up his ear.” – [deleted]
“Upon arrival we ask what ear the bug crawled into, he says his right ear, but keeps complaining about burning coming from his left ear.”
“We noticed his wife standing next to him holding a bottle of insect spray…”
“Upon further questioning we come to find out she sprayed insecticide into his left ear thinking it would ‘flush’ the insect out of his right ear. I had to explain to her that our ear canals are separated by our brain.”
“When I was 12 I had a really irritating case of tonsil stones.” – susannahmia
“No matter what I did I couldn’t get them out and was starting to get a little desperate. I decided to use a vacuum cleaner (not a small one, an actual household vacuum cleaner) on its lowest setting to suck them out.”
“I ended up bleeding a lot and my uvula swelled up so much my throat almost closed.”
“The hospital still wouldn’t take out my tonsils.
“I was not a smart child.”
As someone who’s had tonsil stones, I get it. I wouldn’t try to get rid of them with a vacuum, but I get it.
“Heard the story second hand, but kid had a crazy high fever and wouldn’t stop crying.” – jhoudiey
“Paramedics get on scene… and mom is squeezing a lemon while rubbing it all over the baby’s forehead because it’s ‘supposed to keep the fever down.’ Mom was completely at a loss as to why the baby wouldn’t stop crying either.”
The mom should rub a lemon on her face, and then she’d probably get why her baby kept crying.
“A friend of mine superglued his teeth back into his mouth after drunken shenanigans once.” – rawbamatic
The user elaborated by saying, “They eventually rotted. He still had to go to a dentist.”
Look, I know as well as anyone that the dentist can be expensive. But they’re going to fix your teeth/mouth better than you ever could on your own.
“My patient was instilling honey in his eyes to ‘treat his cataracts and glaucoma…'” – OMGCSME
“Yes he came in for conjunctivitis cause bacteria were having a party on his corneas.”
Honey might have antibacterial properties , but that doesn’t mean you should stick it in your eyes.
“Patient comes in to the ED with an abscess.” – ifergbot
“Tells us he knew he had an infection and so ate a pound and a half of raw steak to get the antibiotics that were given to the cow.”
“I had a patient treating her lung cancer with a ‘sonic emitter.’ Her argument was that sound waves can shatter glass, so lung cancer wouldn’t stand a chance.” – MidwayIceland
Another user added, “So not only did she believe that sound waves could kill cells, she also believed that they would magically target the cancer and leave everything else alone? Brilliant.”
“Self diagnosis. They were in for a Cat Scan for abdominal pain.” – OGHOMER
“Patient began to tell me how they were pretty sure it was Uterine torsion as they researched it online and they were 110% sure this was the issue.
“Sorry to tell you, Sir, I am 100% sure you do not have a uterus.”
“A man came in with his wife because he had been bleeding from his bum.” – IntentionalMisnomer
“He thought that the best way was to self-anesthetize with alcohol, lubricate the area, and cauterize with a curling iron…”
“He actually got it a fair way up before he pulled it out, judging by how much of his rectum turned KFC.”
“We had to remove about a foot of GI tract due to burnt, scarred tissue. The worst part was that didn’t even stop the bleeding, which originated farther up the GI tract than the iron would ever reach.”
Absolutely horrifying.
“Had an old farmer come in to the ED one day with a severely infected wound on his head.” – Dangerous-Dugong
“Turned out he had a growth developing on his head for the past few weeks (which turned out to be a tumour). He had been treating it with RoundUp (a potent weed killer) because ‘that [expletive] kills everything…'”
“This guy slightly burned both his feet while burning leaves.” – [deleted]
“The burns got horribly infected. He knew he needed to drain them. He pulled the toothpick out of his mouth and drove it through the wounds. A USED toothpick. He ended up in the hospital of course.”
“I was working in triage. Another triage nurse called me over to show me a horribly rotten foot.” – modestthoughts
“The first thing I noticed was that there was no detectable odor. Normally the smell is quite pronounced. I wondered out loud why there was no smell.
“That’s when the patient spoke up. She said, ‘Bleach. I’ve been soaking it in bleach every night.'”
It’s amazing how many people… think you can just put bleach on/in your body.
“Had a patient call concerning back pain. I was going about my normal assessment and asked if he had taken anything for the pain, to which he replies ‘Cobra Venom.'” – nursejacqueline
“Turns out, he had read about Cobroxin, a topical treatment for pain made from cobra venom, and decided it would be more effective to simply let a cobra bite him. I have no idea how he got hold of a cobra.”
“When I was on placement on an ortho ward I helped treat a woman’s arm.”
“We checked her x-rays and both her radius and ulna were severely displaced, almost breaking the skin on her arm. She had waited THREE WEEKS before getting it checked out.
“She was damn lucky that she didn’t have any serious complications. Alcohol can be one hell of a painkiller.”
“Paramedic here. Got called to a house about 11:30 one night for a ‘girl with finger nail polish in her eyes.'” – idot08bojangles
“Got there and the scene is a [expletive] show, people screaming and throwing things around. We immediately notice the mother holding down a younger girl and about to pour something in her eyes.
“Nail. Polish. Remover.”
So many questions, and yet I don’t want a single answer.
“When someone breaks their hip the typical presentation is a shortened and externally (sometimes internally) rotated leg.” – [deleted]
“I had a lady that thought her hip had simply popped out and had her kid pull on her leg to try and pop it back in.”
“That didn’t work, but regardless she didn’t believe anything serious was wrong at the time.”
“She waited 3 months before coming to the hospital. She only came in after she couldn’t feel her foot anymore and her leg was swelling up from a deep vein thrombosis.”
