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Article created by: Mindaugas Balčiauskas
For the most part, being friends with a professional like a doctor or lawyer is pretty beneficial. You get access to a trained and educated brain to help you with whatever questions you might have. But there are some folks out there who think that, ultimately, they know best.
Someone asked “Medical professionals, what was a time where a patient ignored you and almost died because of it?” and people shared their most harrowing stories. We also got in touch with Dr. Joe, M.D to learn more. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and if you have a similar tale, write it in the comments section below.
Had a repeat patient (not quite frequent flyer status) as a medic that would always call for a severe allergic reaction to shellfish every other month or so. She had always had the allergy and knew her reactions were getting worse. After a year (6 or 7 calls) of this silliness, my crew and I stayed in the hospital ER with her and talked at length about the situation since she’d always stay mum about how it kept happening.
She told us she comes from a patriarchal culture and her father made this amazing seafood soup. If she didn’t eat it and “force her body not to reject his gift to the family” she would lose her car, phone, or whatever punishment her father deemed necessary. We pleaded with her to do whatever it took to show him it was deadly and carry her Epi-Pens with her.
Fast forward a few years when I altered course into nursing and joined that ER. Saw a familiar bloated face. Turns out she had gone off to college in another state and hadn’t been home for awhile, but had visited her folks for a holiday. Of course she had the soup and despite hitting herself with the Epi-Pen when her throat started tightening, the reaction continued. Her mom, who I had never seen before, told me she tried to eat it fast and rushed to the bathroom where she was found on the floor.
Medics couldn’t tube her in the field so tried medical management until they could drive her to our ER. Doc performed a tracheotomy at the bedside and she went to the ICU. Took a week for her to recover and I was told by the ICU nurses that her father “finally got it” that her allergy was a real medical condition.
Not necessarily the patient, but the caretakers at the facility where the patient was living. I used to visit different board and lodge facilities for adults with mental illnesses and meet with clients to discuss their mental health, help them set up job interviews, therapy sessions, and help them set up their medications for the week if they were unable to do it themselves. Most of these facilities were places for people who had left the hospital and were deemed independent and stable enough to have the freedom to come and go as they pleased in a shared living situation, much like a dorm. Despite having a place to stay and food provided, they were usually pretty poorly supervised by the mental health staff workers there. I often hated these places because, while they were ideal for some people who were truly getting back on their feet and thrived off being able to live a semi normal independent life, they were way too lax for many of the sicker more isolating patients who were not at all well and slipping under the radar. Some of this included them not taking their medication as directed, which was one of the requirements for keeping their housing, but unfortunately it was not strictly enforced.
There was one man who had paranoid schizophrenia who was extremely quiet and kept to himself. I had met with him a few times and he seemed to be going downhill in his appearance and general mood. I spoke with his doctor and urged the facility staff to closely monitor him and his medication intake, as I saw in his logs that he often skipped coming in to get his medication at all. I was told that they were going to be sitting down with him to remind him of his living agreement and that he had 30 days before losing his housing if he wasn’t med compliant. I was also told that his psychiatrist was aware and they may be sending him back to the hospital that week.
Apparently this never happened and he went out into the community and acquired a knife and used it to slice up his roommate while his roommate slept. He carved him from mouth to ear and stabbed him in the stomach several times. The man survived the attack but the man who had gone off his medication claimed he was being poisoned by his roommate through the window AC unit. For anyone with a violent incident like that on their medical report, it is incredibly unlikely he will ever be able to find a better rehabilitation house ever again that will accept him. The system basically screwed over two people that day, as the man who was hurt was already there for PTSD, and as you can imagine, it not only scarred him physically for life but exacerbated his illness with more trauma.
When I was in medical school had a gentleman in his late 60’s come in for chest pain, found to have a large heart attack (very impressive STEMI in LAD by ekg). Refused emergent cardiac catheterization (go through the arteries and put a stent to open up the vessel of the heart) so he could bring his car home and planned on taking an ambulance back to the hospital. He was in the parking ramp and it cost $20/day to park.
Came back by ambulance in full arrest (no pulse) and died. Doc had to call his son and explain what happened, he was like “yah that sounds like dad, he’s always been cheap”.
We had a mom in the NICU who would constantly kiss her premature baby on the mouth. Several nurses educated her around why that’s not safe for the baby, and thankfully documented their teachings. This was during cold and flu season, and became even more concerning when the mother was coming in with cold-like symptoms (coughing, sneezing and obvious congestion). She still continued to kiss the baby right on the mouth. The baby was almost ready to go home by this time, but got extremely sick. The baby ended up on a ventilator and had quite the extended stay with many, many close calls.
Didn’t die, but did lose an eye as a result. Young kid (20) with bad diabetic retinopathy from uncontrolled DM type 1, had eye surgery to remove blood and scar tissue from inside the eye. We told him to take it easy for a few weeks. He went to six flags. Rollercoasters are bad. Retina completely detached, eye got soft and painful, had to be removed.
Had a throat cancer patient, we offered him surgery to remove the tumor (it was a fairly conservative surgery) he left because he didn’t want a mutilating surgery and his daughter in law had been studying magnet therapy and “she was quite good with it” (his words) he came back a year later, and was out of reach from any treatment, his cancer was so advanced that there was nothing we could do for him.
Patient was supposed to have starved for eight hours for her morning scheduled breast surgery. During the procedure she regurgitated what can only be described as as a full partially digested English breakfast, with identifiable sausages, egg, beans and possibly black pudding, up into her unprotected airway and attempted to inhale the lot.
Managed to prevent the majority of it going down, but she needed HDU care for a day or so for her lungs to recover from the stomach acid.
Patient came to see me having a stroke due to a blocked brain artery. I’d activated the Code Stroke team – everyone was ready in the theatre to get the clot out of her artery: nurses, anaesthetist, technician – but she (42) insisted on updating her Facebook status and “checking in” before allowing me to treat her. Wasted 3-5 minutes and 6-10 million brain cells (if she had that many to start with).
I’m a dietitian so no one follows my advice. It just takes longer for them to die from it.
Nurse/paramedic here. Frequently went to a patient’s home for a shortness of breath call. She was always smoking while receiving supplemental oxygen, which is quite dangerous. I told her to stop doing it. A few weeks later, she burned her house down and nearly died of third degree facial burns after continuing to smoke while on oxygen.
I’m not a medical professional, but I used to get allergy injections to build up my immune system because of the crazy amount of allergies I had. I would get these injections every week and I was instructed by my family doctor and the allergist to wait in the waiting room 30 minutes after the injection in case I received a reaction. Well, one day I decided I didn’t want to wait anymore (also because it had been a few months without a reaction) and left immediately after my appointment. I went into anaphylactic shock not even 10 minutes later. It was crazy because I didn’t even know what was happening at first and didn’t even know how to use an EpiPen.
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Edvinas Jovaišas
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