16 People Who Thought They Knew Better Than Their Doctors And Suffered Horrible Consequences

Having had everything from major surgeries to teeth being pulled, I am the sort of person who will ask doctors a thousand questions and follow instructions to a T. I'm glad I am this person because after reading this Reddit thread where doctors and other medical professionals share incidents of patients ignoring advice and suffering serious consequences because of it. Here is what some of them shared:

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.

1. "I am a nurse, and I had a very polite and lovely patient trying to remove all manner of chest tubes and IVs after a motorcycle accident. He was obviously delirious from the pain meds and the head injury, but he was very nice still. I left him in the care of my coworker for my lunch. 10 minutes into my lunch break, I saw him stagger past the break room door like something out of The Walking Dead , trailing blood everywhere, only to collapse out cold a couple of seconds later. He said he needed the bathroom! Idk how the fuck he pulled his own chest tubes out. Removing them always makes me cringe, let alone do it to myself. He was put back to bed, this time in the ICU, and got some more sedation. Even though his ripping it all out set him back a couple of weeks, he was still discharged and came to say hi and thanks on the way out. The happiest, most delirious patient I ever had. What a bloody trooper."

2. "We had a college student come into the ER and had a wonderful case of appendicitis. He needed to get surgery ASAP as surgery is way easier and safer if done before it ruptures. He called his parents to let them know, and they told him to refuse because he had a test upcoming in the week, and they didn't want him to miss it. He left the ER against medical advice while we were all telling him that if your appendicitis gets worse and ruptures, it can definitely lead to death. The kid luckily came back about 10 hours later after it ruptured. He got the emergency surgery, and the amount of time he had to spend in the hospital probably doubled."

— u/I_AM_A_BOOK

3. "I had a repeat patient (not quite frequent flyer status) as a medic who would always call for a severe allergic reaction to shellfish every other month or so. She had always had an allergy and knew her reactions were getting worse. After a year (six or seven 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 took a course in nursing and joined that ER. I saw a familiar bloated face. She had gone to college in another state and hadn't been home for a while 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 they tried medical management until they could drive her to our ER. Doc performed a tracheotomy at the bedside and she went to the ICU. It took a week for her to recover, and I was told by the ICU nurses that her father 'finally got it' and that her allergy was a real medical condition."

— u/MonsterHunterRelias

4. "We had a mom in the NICU who would constantly kiss her premature baby on the mouth. Several nurses educated her about 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 came 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 an extended stay with many, many close calls."

5. "Animal hospital professionals, at least once a week, we have to re-suture up a spay because the owners don’t want to keep the cone on their dog/cat and let them tear up their surgical site. Their organs are right there — keep the damn cone on! I don’t care how 'sad' Luna is with it on. Then they yell at me because it costs money to sedate and re-suture an animal."

— u/chandeliercat

6. "I've read that the most common reason for a surgery to be re-performed is the patient not following the doctor's orders during recovery. The doctor says: 'Don't ride your bicycle for six weeks.' Patient hears: 'Don't ride your bicycle until you feel you can.'

— u/Scrappy_Larue

7. "When I was in medical school, I had a gentleman in his late 60s 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 on the parking ramp, and parking costs $20/day. He came back by ambulance in full arrest (no pulse) and died. Doc had to call his son and explain what happened, he was like, 'Yeah, that sounds like dad, he’s always been cheap.'"

8. "My grandpa is the patient. He's told, 'Come straight back if you have any chest pain.' He didn't go back, and this is what followed: a blood clot traveled to his brain, which led to three strokes, and he had bleeding on the brain. He then had two more minor strokes. He was paralyzed in his left arm and right foot. He ended up having Broca's Aphasia ."

"He went from being a man nearing his 80s who was old school. He worked as a school crossing guard, grew all of his own vegetables, fed the birds, built tables, biked six miles on the weekends, walked everywhere, and was still able to play darts despite his eyesight being that of a visually impaired gnat because he knew the board so well.

He went from that to living in a care home and being unable to talk. Has he lost his stubbornness? Nope. He won't do his rehabilitation, and so even though he could get his speech back to a decent degree, he doesn't want to do the therapy. Using communication cards humiliates him, so we're left trying to decipher random eyebrow movements so we can guess what he's trying to say."

— u/Arlessa

9. "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 know what was happening at first or even know how to use an EpiPen."

10. "I was an assistant manager of a group home. We had a resident who had epilepsy and was also very reclusive. He would get agitated if we entered his room or knocked on the door. However, the policy said he had to be checked on every 30 minutes because of his seizure risk. That wasn't being done, so I discussed this with the manager. She said she knew this, but it was okay to bend the rules because he would get really upset when we checked in on him. I really wasn't comfortable with her answer, but I was young and assumed she knew better than I did."

"When I was on duty, I checked on him every 30 minutes, and he would yell at me, but I didn't let it bother me. About six months later, after I had been reassigned to another group home, he had a seizure alone in his room and was found dead a day later. Now I'm older and a little smarter. When I find a problem like this, I stick with it and don't let people talk me out of it. Not again. Rest in peace, D. Gone but not forgotten."

— u/notreallylucy

11. "A 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 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. She managed to prevent the majority of it from going down, but she needed HDU care for a day or so for her lungs to recover from the stomach acid."

12. "A friend of mine had a broken leg and got infected — his mum wouldn't force him to take the correct medication. How he kept his leg, I have no idea; he had so many complications."

— u/fpotenza

13. "I didn't almost die, but I got scarring on my eyes after surgery because I didn't follow the instructions for my eye drops. The eye drops had a thick, translucent quality, and it felt disgusting to have this white, gooey substance in my eyes, so I kept postponing putting them in. I can still see well, but I could have avoided getting unclear stripes in my field of vision. I beat myself up for it for about two years, but I was at last able to forgive myself."

— u/fjuckthisshit

14. "I wasn't there that day, but we had a patient who had been noncompliant with his leg pumps — these inflatable Velcro things force blood to continue circulating so that clots don't form in the legs. He didn't want to wear them and had the right to refuse so we couldn't force him. Lo and behold, when therapy finally got him up to walk the halls, he immediately keeled over from a massive heart attack. They coded him right there on the floor and got him back, but he passed later that night."

15. "Nurse/paramedic here. Frequently, I 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."

— u/markko79

16. And finally, "I had a patient who was NPO (not allowed to eat) because he had a bowel obstruction. He didn’t like that we weren’t feeding him, so unbeknownst to the nurses, he called up Papa John’s and ordered some garlic knots. He ate the entire box. Then, predictably, he vomited them up, aspirated his vomit, went into respiratory arrest, and coded. We did CPR and got him back. He had some underlying lung issues, so we never could get him weaned off the ventilator. He spent a month in the ICU and was eventually discharged to a long-term care facility with a tracheostomy on the vent."

— u/cupcakewife

Are you a medical professional with a similar story? If so, share it with me in the comments below.