Do-It-Yourself Medical Procedures That Caused Even More Problems
It’s safe to assume that most of us have put off seeing a doctor until we were in dire straits. These doctors, however, have taken to Reddit to share stories of patients who, rather than just not go to the doctor, have really sought to forgo any medical care completely.
A few of the below medical “hacks” have a chance of succeeding in principle, but have been soundly disproved by experience. In no circumstances should any of these methods be attempted at home.
1. Cost-Saving Measures
A gentleman walked into the emergency department one day after he tried to give himself a vasectomy with an animal neutering kit he bought on the internet. When we asked him why he said that his wife wanted to have a sixth kid and it was too expensive to pay a doctor to do it.
He didn’t think it would be all that difficult to do it himself.
2. Just a Spoonful of Sugar
Sugar can actually be used to help heal certain types of wounds. A patient I saw had missed an appointment with part of their care team where they get their bandage changed. I noticed what appeared to be oozing around the edges of the bandage.
I asked my patient about it and offered to change it for them even though we didn’t typically do that in our clinic.
I go get fresh bandages and whatnot, then take the old one off. I immediately started gagging. It’s just sticky and stringy, picture the slo-mo shots of caramel being pulled apart. And it smelled…weird. To be fair, most wounds smell, but this was different. I finally asked them what they used to change their bandage since I knew it wasn’t discharge I was seeing.
Maple syrup…they used maple syrup.
3. It’s a Nice Gesture
One time when I was in nursing school, I was doing ER clinical and a guy came in with “penile pain.” Long story short, several days prior, he decided he wanted a texture implant to help enhance pleasure during bedroom activities for his lady friend.
He and his buddy got tipsy (of course) and decided to do it themselves. It couldn’t have gone worse.
They went in his garage and took a box cutter to slice open the skin on the dorsal (top) side of his member, made some room between the skin and underlying muscle, and put a small porcelain heart underneath. Then he superglued it shut.
To make matters worse, the guy didn’t wait for it to heal and decided to take it for a test run immediately.
He ended up with a major infection and presented several days later. I, unfortunately, don’t know the outcome; I was just there for the porcelain heart extraction.
4. He’s Probably Fine
I saw a young child with a bruised, swollen, crooked forearm. He had fallen on the playground three days earlier and another parent there was a vet and had horse X-ray equipment in his truck. That parent took X-rays and told the mom that the kid was probably fine.
So that was apparently good enough for mom and she didn’t do anything for three days.
Her child was up all night screaming in pain. Finally, she took him into my office and brought me the fuzzy copies of the X-rays, which were useless and impossible to accurately interpret. I got him real X-rays and a nice cast for his very broken arm.