First in a series: InCrowd is dedicating the next three weeks to sharing stories of healthcare professionals’ most memorable patients and experiences. This week, we asked providers to tell us about their patients’ most puzzling health conditions.
1. “I had a patient in respiratory distress once who ultimately died (she was in her 90’s). The CT we obtained just before she passed she showed that her aorta was compressing her trachea. Her aorta essentially strangled her.” –Radiologist, OH, 6 years in practice
2. “A patient believed she was paralyzed from a diving injury. When she was awake, she was unable to move anything below her neck. She moved completely freely in her sleep.” –Nurse, VA, 10 years in practice
3.  “I had a patient with chronic low sodium. It turned out that lung cancer was the cause.” –Physician Assistant, IL, 13 years in practice
4. “Orgasm-induced narcolepsy” –Psychiatry, NY, 5 years in practice
5. “I once admitted a patient for a pleural effusion. She had a history of breast cancer, and we discovered that her effusion was from a misplaced chemotherapy port dumping into her pleural space.” –Internal Medicine, OH, 7 years in practice
6. “My patient kept coming in with cellulitis in her inner thigh area. We would treat her with antibiotics and it kept coming back…She finally admitted that she was injecting herself with household cleaner.“ –Nurse, FL, 16 years in practice
7. “An otherwise asymptomatic male patient insisted on wearing a hat and we didn’t know why. I asked him to remove the hat for his examination. To our surprise, we noticed a huge mass on his scalp. The biopsy showed squamous cell carcinoma extending into the skull.” –Oncologist, KY, 3 years in practice
8. “A 30 year old female experienced rectal bleeding during her period only. We took the patient for a colonoscopy and found endometriosis in the sigmoid colon.”–Primary Care Physician, CA, 11 years in practice
9. “Early in my career, I was draining a hematoma, or at least what I thought was a hematoma. Turned out to be a chronic pressure wound infested with fly larva.” –Physician Assistant, MD, 6 years in practice
Stay tuned for next week!
