You never know who's around the corner, gazing into your window, or listening in on your phone conversations, or...controlling the President? Paranoia manifests in many ways, not always the same, and thankfully we have the internet to see how they play out.
Reddit user, u/Vulpes1_1, wanted doctors to share what they could when they asked:
Doctors of Reddit, what was the craziest case of patient paranoia that you have ever seen?
Hey, Satan? Can You Open Up?
GiphyFormer psych nurse here, I once had a patient who believed he was Satan. Since Satan was nude so was he. He spent much of his time in a private, secure room and when it was time to go for some fresh air around the unit we had to bargain with him to wear a robe.
Just Look At The Name
Student nurse here, but I still go to the hospital for internships. Had a patient come to the ER with really high blood sugar, type 2 diabetic. I asked her if she was taking her medications and she said that she didnt want to. Thinking she was referring to some type of bad side effect, I asked her what medication she was taking and it was Diabinese (chlorpropamide for those of you who aren't brazilian), pretty standard DM2 medication, not a lot of bad side effects other than some skin rashes.
I asked her why she wasnt taking the pills and she said "look at the name, I can't take something that has Diabo (devil in portuguese) in the title, if I have to go, I shall go without any contact with these devilish chemicals, like the Lord intended" It was hard not to laugh at that one but i kept my sh-t together
Wouldn't Put It Past President Orangeface
Psych nurse. Had a patient that thought that the queen was a lizard person who swapped his penis with another one.
Also had a patient who thought we were drugging the air through the vents.
Oh and someone who thought his cat was spying/stalking him for Trump.
A Technical Master
Surgical nurse here: Had a patient return to the OR who had some hardware (plates and screws) put in their elbow for a fracture. The hardware was causing them discomfort so instead of talking to her surgeon they decided to try and remove one of the scews(!) with a knife and screwdriver(!!).
I got the case for the wound clean up and replacement of said exposed screw. One of the strangest ones I've had yet.
Again, Wouldn't Put It Past President Wispyhair
My wife is a clinician and had a person come in with the idea that Donald Trump's Twitter feed it was actually an alien artificial intelligence that infects everyone who reads it.
I really like that one
*face smack
Patients mother didn't want son to get vaccinated because she thought vaccinations created superbugs that couldn't be treated
Bunny...Why?
Many, many moons ago when I was a student nurse, I was caring for a man over Easter. He had been hallucinating wildly, thrashing around and seeing rabbits all over the ward (an old fashioned open ward). He had delerium tremens from alcohol withdrawal, we were administering large amounts of intravenous sedation (hemineverin) to keep him calm and things were going well.
Until the night sister came bouncing in at 3am dressed as the Easter bunny, ears and all! His face was a picture. We couldn't get her out fast enough.
History Spoke For Itself
Paramedic. Had a guy refuse an EKG for his 10/10 left sided crushing chest pain because they caused heart attacks. When I asked him why he thought that he said all of his friends who died of heart attacks had one, and that he was wise to our EKG conspiracy to give people heart disease and raise money for big pharma.
Can You Hear The Blades?!?
GiphyNot a doctor, but I scribe for one. A patient of ours was having hallucinations where a helicopter was chasing him. He'd randomly hear helicopter sounds throughout the day and felt like he was being spied on.
Turns out he was ingesting too many edibles and smoking too much weed. Once he cut down, the paranoia stopped.
A Mind Too Old To Notice
Not a doctor, but I work with elderly people prone to delirium. We once had an 80-year-old academic at our institute; I think he was some sort of professor and obviously well-spoken, also mostly appeared to be very lucid at first glance. For months, he'd harbored the idea that he was at the center of an elaborate ritual conducted by a medieval sort of witch.
Because of her "spells", he would constantly phase in and out of consciousness, imagining to smoke a pipe and talk to people that weren't there at all etc. He further claimed that he had found that there were pentagrams drawn in lemon juice and goat urine all over his apartment.
His mouth was constantly "deathly dry", because she would fill it with the ashes of cursed scrolls and parchment. The witch planned to extract something from his body to create a "flying ointment" or something, for her broomstick. Anyways, it was absolutely wild and nonsensical.
The crazy thing was, his delusions turned out to be warranted. It was later found that his granddaughter for months had actually tried to poison him with incrementally increasing doses of belladonna-extract.
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