Reddit user FragmentedTungsten asked the AskReddit community, “What is the most out-of-pocket thing your doctor has said to you?”
Now, it’s no secret that the medical field is extremely grueling and requires special kinds of people to carry out the difficult work. That being said, there are still individuals within the field who lack the bedside manner patients hope to receive during their visits. Here are some doctors who could speak with a bit more tact when addressing their patients:
1. “I had an anal fissure for like six years before going to a doctor. Every third or fourth poop, it would tear back open and gush blood everywhere. I had a special towel I’d bite on and everything. Trust me, my butt was in tatters, like a torn windsock. Anyway, I finally went to the doctor, who told me to drop trou and lie on my side in the bed. I watched him approach me over my shoulder, and the dude nearly flung himself to the other side of the room as he recoiled at the sight of my starfish. Audible gasp.”
2. “I asked my new doctor what I thought was a simple follow-up question about his diagnosis. He instantly flipped and started ranting: ‘I’M THE DOCTOR HERE! I WENT TO MED SCHOOL! YOU SPENT A FEW MINUTES ON GOOGLE, AND YOU’RE GOING TO QUESTION ME?’ Needless to say, I went home and googled a new doctor.”
3. “This happened to me upon waking up after emergency surgery because my appendix ruptured. Doctor: ‘Pick three of your favorite foods you’d love to eat right now.’ Me: ‘Pizza, steak, wings.’ Doctor: ‘Those sounds amazing. Too bad you won’t be able to eat any of that stuff for at least a week.'”
4. “I had a doctor quit casting my arm and say, ‘Let me go YouTube it,’ before leaving the room.”
5. “I was 15 years old at my first gynecological appointment. My mom had scheduled the appointment for me after finding out I was having sex. The doctor examining me was the one who delivered me. In the middle of the exam, with my feet in stirrups and legs spread in front of him, this doctor told me how proud he was when he walked his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day because he knew that her white dress actually meant something. The disgust didn’t register until about 10 years later. But damn.”
6. “I had a persistent cough (non-smoker) that wouldn’t go away for over six weeks. The doctor asked why I wanted to get rid of it.”
7. “I went to the dermatologist for my acne. She walked in and said, ‘Alright, let’s fix your face!'”
8. “I was having abdominal pain, so my primary care physician scheduled me for an X-ray. The doctor showed me the film, while looking me dead in the eye and said, ‘You’re literally full of shit.'”
9. “When I was in labor, my OB-GYN directed me to lay on the bed by saying, ‘Get in the position that got you into this situation.'”
10. “Not my doctor, but my dentist. While in for a mouth guard, he said, ‘I’m now, for lack of a better word, going to put my caulk in your mouth.'”
11. “Instead of the standard, ‘Are you sexually active?’ question, the doctor asked if I was ‘sexually promiscuous.’ I found that pretty amusing.”
12. “I asked him if I needed antibiotics, and he said, ‘Do you think you need antibiotics?'”
13. “I went to get diagnosed with depression so I could start seeing a psychiatrist. He told me to ‘just get a girlfriend.’ Yeah, sure, I’ll just pick one up from the store on the way home.”
14. “When I asked to be sedated for an IUD insertion to help manage my endometriosis symptoms, the doctor laughed and said, ‘Nah, we don’t do that for women. Besides, you have to get used to that kind of pain if you want kids someday, right?’ and then left the room. I was speechless.”
15. “A doctor performed surgery to fix my heel bone. I ended up needing six screws and a plate. On a follow-up visit, I asked when it would stop hurting, and the doctor said, ‘When you die.’ It was the most straight-to-the-point answer ever given.”
16. “I got sent to the emergency room via my campus clinic after blood tests due to appendicitis. The ER doc tried to tell me that I had an STI after knowing nothing but the symptoms I described. They also tried to tell me my symptoms were ‘too textbook’ to be appendicitis. Long story short, my appendix was very close to bursting by the time I made it to surgery.”
17. “I started seeing a new family doctor a few weeks ago. I had a rough bout of pneumonia. The doctor started asking questions since I was a new patient. He asked what kind of birth control I was on. I told him I wasn’t on any since my husband and I may want another baby. He goes, ‘You should be on birth control. No one has babies on purpose.’ So I said, ‘Both of my children were planned…’ and he was like, ‘Oh, you have two? So no time for intimacy. You could just read a book and let your husband go at it for 10 minutes.’ I was all ‘WTF???’ I was there because I had pneumonia! Why was this even a topic? I will never go back.”
18. “My old doctor during an appointment: ‘You should pray to God about your medical issues. He knows how to heal you better than I.’ What???”
19. “After telling her about my five+ year history of neck and shoulder pain and that I’d been a professional house painter for about 12 years, she looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘I used to paint, and I don’t have shoulder pain,’ as if to imply I was lying or something. I must have looked at her like she was out of her mind because she got mad and barked, ‘What do you want me to do about it?!’ like I was some a-hole. I wasn’t even asking for meds. I just wanted my neck looked at by a specialist. That was after she dismissed me for thinking that the three days I spent deep-cleaning my house could’ve been a reason for my neck pain flare. She was always borderline rude to me, but I dropped her as my doctor literally 10 seconds after I walked out of her exam room.”
20. “My OB-GYN said my cervix looked like it was straight out of an anatomical textbook and that it could be ‘a model among cervixes.'”
22. “My dentist asked me if I wanted Invisalign since I ‘obviously never had braces before.’ I said, ‘Uh, I wore braces as a kid.’ She said, ‘Surely the orthodontist did not leave your teeth looking like this?’ I thought my teeth were pretty straight. Now I have a complex. What specifically was she referring to?”
23. “I’m a lawyer, and my doctor asked how I was doing, and I said, ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ Then he said he was getting a divorce and asked me a bunch of legal questions before telling me I had melanoma.”
24. “When I was 14, I had to get a physical, and my mom was in the room. This old doctor dude was flirting with my mom while actively holding my balls.”
25. “I was told to ‘stop having so much sex’ when I was having chronic UTI symptoms for years and physically couldn’t have sex. Turns out it’s an autoimmune disease! Cool, dude.”
26. “I’d just graduated nursing school. Halfway through my pap smear, my doctor said they had an opening for a nurse and asked if I was interested in applying.”
27. And: “‘You’re going to be good at being old!’ said in response to my intense chronic pain, dislocating joints, and fibromyalgia. They offered no help or medications beyond that statement.”
Has your doctor ever said something super odd or unprofessional while you were in their care? What happened? Tell us in the comments or share your story anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
