Doctors of Internet, what was the most overdramatic(or underdramatic) patient you ever had?

I think we have all seen our share of overdramatic patients or heard the tales, so I’ll go with the less common underdramatic patient.

Patient presented to the Trauma ER with an 18 inch Machete blade firmly implanted across the top of his skull. He was driven to the hospital by a friend (possible assailant/owner of said Machete), ambulated on his own into the ER, had totally normal vital signs in triage, a slight steady trickle of blood from the wound, denied pain and was in no apparent distress.

Due to a mass trauma event, the ER was insanely busy, so it took us a while to get him a bed. In the meantime, he calmly sat in the waiting area, (nearest to the Triage station so we could keep an eye on him) and watched TV,
as staff were running around like crazy, phones ringing nonstop, patients bitching about the wait time to be seen and exhibiting other types of tomfoolery. Machete man just sat there tranquilly exhibiting his true Zen mastery of machete head wounds.

All these years later, I can still see him with that machete lodged in his skull. He had an uncomplicated treatment course and suffered no impairment from the injury. He was cooperative and nice to all his care givers.

He also profusely thanked us for caring for him. Probably one of the few that did that night!

My mum was called in to help with an emergency. Went to the ward where a girl was sat up in bed, conscious, quite calm and talking freely to medics. Mum realised as she got closer that the girl had argued/broken up with her chef boyfriend, who had sunk a 12” carving knife into her stomach. The girl was just sat in bed chatting with a towel wrapped around the knife stuck in her belly. My mum couldn’t believe it.

Never remove a knife from a stab wound or you might bleed to death.
Also don’t piss off chefs.

Instead of the patient, I find it’s always the family that’s the most dramatic.

We were doing paternity testing for an apparently extremely acrimonious case of “Your son impregnated my daughter!” “No he didn’t, your daughter sleeps with lots of other boys!”. Each side sent a lawyer to the appointment. Each lawyer had their phone out recording, and followed the blood and cheek swabs from collection, through the lab for DNA extraction, performing the test in our PCR room, and watching me analyze the data files which is exactly as boring as it sounds…

It’s like dude, we’re the neutral third party lab here. We have literally zero interest in the outcome of the case, you don’t need to be so dramatic. All the chain of custody stuff is documented. We have a second observer signing off on sample IDs. We’re not going to risk lose our license by accepting a bribe from either set of parents.

60~70 year old lady arrives at Trauma ER. She was being CHASED BY A COW, running for her life and fell off a fucking 2 meter cliff. She had several fractures, but only really complained about her leg, and tried to get up and walk away several times telling us she was fine. Initially we thought she had some head trauma and was completely disoriented, but it turns out she was just that stubborn. She was hospitalized for awhile and had a good recovery. I do wonder if the cow fell of the cliff as well lol