BuzzFeed compiled 63 Reddit anecdotes about patients’ medical misunderstandings and risky choices. One post describes a patient using bleach on ringworm; another says a patient wore contact lenses for eight months without removing them.
The article says it combines replies to a Reddit question asking doctors and nurses about the “dumbest patient” they had encountered with posts from other threads. The roundup includes both contributors’ own accounts and stories they say they heard from colleagues or relatives.
Some posts recount serious harm. One contributor described a man who drank a bottle containing sulfuric acid after mistaking it for alcohol; he later needed multiple surgeries and feeding through a PEG tube. Another account says a child swallowed a second magnet that stuck to the first through the stomach wall, causing an intestinal obstruction that required surgery.
