This happens all the time because healthcare is a financial decision in America
Not a nurse/doctor but a lab scientist. Had a guy come in at the end of the day for chest pain that’s been bothering him “all weekend”. The ED doc ordered a troponin blood test which helps rule in/out heart attacks. If the test runs above 0.03, we consider that a sign for a heart attack and act accordingly. This guy’s very first troponin was 21.00. TWENTY-ONE. The highest we’ve ever had up till then was an 8.00. The guy should’ve been dead ages ago, but he somehow pulled through. Don’t ignore chest pains, people.
Not a doctor, but an Army medic. Had a dude come in to the aid station at like, 2am with his arm all wrapped up. Took the wraps off, shit looked necrotic. I asked him what the fuck was going on.
Turns out, the weekend before we went out to the field, this man went and got his whole forearm tattooed. He then spent the next week wading through chest-deep swamps, figuring that if he just kept his arm wrapped, he’d be okay.
I was like…brother no.
Edit: oh yeah, there was also that time some female LT came in with vaginal pain. Took a look, saw one helluva infection. Apparently, she hadn’t changed her tampon in nearly a week. We (meaning I, while the Dr watched) had to “retrieve” it.
Children’s nurse here, my first week in paediatric ED we had a young girl (6/7) come in with a really swollen jaw/face. Poor girl was unable to move her jaw without intense pain and hadn’t been able to eat for several days. Turns out she had only just started cleaning her teeth for the first time ever and managed to develop several abscesses and rotten teeth in the process. To make it worse her mum told us she was recovering from the same procedures to remove most of her teeth because of almost the same thing… they didn’t want to bother the gp as they thought she was just messing about to get out of school.
A&E/ED doctor here!
A farmer in his 70s reluctantly came in with his wife after falling over outside while wrangling a sheep one WEEK earlier. He did not want to be there but had been “forced” to come by his wife who was worried about him. On questioning/examining he was pale, short of breath, and clearly in pain all over the right side of his chest but not wanting to show it! X-ray and bloods showed he’d broken loads of ribs, punctured his lung and bled profusely into his chest and was now very anaemic!