Most of us try not to go to the doctor any more than we absolutely have to, but when other health issues arise, we might have to spend more time in the office and possibly with a wider variety of doctors.
And the more often you have to be in a patient care room, the more likely you are to hear an unforgettable, if not scarring, comment.
Curious, Redditor ThickImprovement8324 asked:
"What's one thing a doctor told you that you've never forgotten?"
A Time To Learn!
"After a freak and devastating chest infection, I was coming out of sedation, on a ventilator with a feeding tube and still unable to speak or even lift my arm much, from the surgeon inching out the drainage tubes in my chest bit by bit every day."
"So my doctor said, 'So you have all this time in bed. What language are you going to learn?’"
"Sir. I’m going to watch the entirety of 'Parks and Rec' and sleep a lot. Really just shows you how different people are wired. I’m glad the insane overachievers were part of my medical team, but I will never be one of them. My family still laughs about it."
- dogmealyem
Strong Abs
"My OB was stitching me back up after my C-section. He said I had 'objectively strong abs.'"
"I told my CrossFit gym they need to put that in their ads."
- charlielouiedusty
"My OB popped her head over the curtain during mine and said, 'Can I have your Ab workout?' Followed by, 'We can’t get your uterus back in.'"
" I was bruised from chest to pelvis because my ab muscles were so hard to maneuver. It was because I cared for my granny for the entire pregnancy, and she was bedridden. But I guess it kept my abs tight, LOL."
- Able-Tackles6805
An Ideal Situation
"I was six weeks pregnant with my first child. At my first prenatal visit, the doctor checked the opening of my pelvis. His words, 'We could back an 18-wheeler in here!' He seemed quite pleased."
"I guess he wasn’t wrong as I had a 10-pound baby vaginally with no problems!"
- Azby504
A Moment Of Hope
"I had an ectopic rupture for my first pregnancy. After explaining the fastest roads to take to the hospital for emergency surgery to my husband, he took a moment to gently hold my hand and say, 'Okay, we’re going to go save your life now.'"
"He was the greatest doctor I’ve ever had. I’ll never forget how calming his voice was even while I was actively dying. I’ll always be grateful to him."
- spookykitteh9
An Eye (Or Jaw)-Opening Realization
"Dentist, when speaking about stress headaches, 'You know your teeth are only supposed to touch when you chew, and sometimes when you yawn, right?'"
"Nope. I thought they touched all the time."
- cornerzcan
"Huh... thanks for that. I know I've got a stress problem but that really put it in perspective."
- Redditeer
A Priceless Support System
"He brought his office staff in to talk to me. I had just quit drinking, and he was a recovering alcoholic himself."
"He was so supportive and compassionate. I needed to hear things from someone just like me and it really helped."
"I've been sober since 2001."
- annemarizie
An Important Reality Check
"This is silly but I went through some different stuff as a kid, and I had just seen a documentary about a few serial killers that made me scared of myself, as they had gone through similar things as me, and I was young and thought I might snap like them."
"She said that I was too empathetic to ever do such a thing and that kinda reassured me that I wouldn't be a bad person growing up."
- Hollowismyname
A Model Gynecologist
"I was generally an anxious crying disaster during a pap/biopsy/iud/post-baby lady parts process of NONSENSE."
"I apologized for being a mess to my male OBGYN and his med assistant, who had both in my eyes gone to pretty great lengths to calm me down and talk me through the pain, anxiety, etc. I feel pretty comfortable with these humans, as it’s the same team that delivered both of my babies."
"He says, 'if I accomplish anything in this career, I hope it’s that I can get women to stop apologizing for how they react to having to deal with all the sh*t they have to deal with.'"
"The same doctor had also said to me, when I was facing a few different reproductive scenarios, 'I will do whatever you want me to do. It’s your body. My job is to answer your questions, give you the facts, and when you make your decision, I will have your back 100%'"
"He has done many things for me to improve my outlook and to help me learn to advocate for myself in our garbage healthcare system, but those times really stick out to me. I compare all other doctors to him."
- princessbiscuit
The Best Veins
"'You sir, have the veins of my dreams. Come look at this man’s veins.'"
"Nurses then proceed to argue about who was going to take blood from said veins."
- Suspicious_Rub_7348
"I was at a party once, just sitting and chatting, when all of a sudden one of the people I was talking to grabbed my arm and said, 'OOOH, you have such good veins!!!' and the other person chimed in with, 'Oh wow yeah, I’d love to stick a cannula in you!'"
"They were both nurses. It was weird. We’re good friends now."
- roguecomete
Not Worth His Time
"I told my doctor my knees crunch when I bend them. Showed him what I meant and he said, 'Wow, that doesn't sound very good,' and then left the room. Appointment over."
- riphitter
"Oooh, I had one like that for my hearing. I have tinnitus and hearing loss, but at the time, I was having this feeling like something was 'in' my ear. Doctor came in, read I had tinnitus, said, 'There's no cure, take some herbal supplements,' and walked out. Didn't even look in my ears."
"I went to Urgent Care and found I had a nasty inner ear infection."
- GeekCat
Mixed Up Sisters
"Doctor: How’s your epilepsy doing?"
"Me: Wrong sister, but she’s managing well with medication."
"Doctor: Oh right, you’re the fainter! How’s that going?"
- gothicig
Ear Compliments
"That I had a 'really nice ear canal.' I was so flattered for virtually no reason."
- Diligent-Ratio-4654
"'Wow! You have basically no earwax!' was the one I got."
"I’m still smug about it. Meet someone who thinks they’re better than me? I just think to myself, 'Bet you’ve got more earwax than me.'"
- cleareyes101
A Rule To Live By
"I cut myself pretty bad on my left index finger, trying to open a coconut, and my girlfriend at the time took me to the hospital at like 12:30 AM."
"When the doctor asked what had happened, and I explained, he said, 'No knives after midnight!'"
"It's a pretty good rule, which I'm sure he had plenty of experience with."
- rememberthegreatwar
The Cure That Finally Came
"Wasn't to me but I was in the room cause I was accompanying my mom to all her appointments. Her surgeon basically told her, 'You're right, there is a problem, but we can fix it,' and it caused her to burst out in tears of happiness."
"She'd been dealing with abdominal cramping and pain for going on 10 years, started mild and had gotten progressively worse to the point where when it would hit she would be in tears, hunched over, unable to eat or move."
"A bunch of doctors had diagnosed and treated her for a bunch of things that did nothing for the pain, and eventually, most had told her to get a psych eval cause it was clearly in her head. Finally, she convinced a surgeon to do some kind of exploratory surgery with a camera."
"Turns out, it wasn't in her head, she'd been born with a condition where her large intestine wasn't attached to her abdominal wall the way it was supposed to be. Over the previous 10 years, it had moved in such a way to coil around her small intestine, her appendix, and her colon and was starting to cut off circulation and cause cell death."
"They ended up removing something like six to seven inches of her large intestine, her appendix and a large part of her small intestine. Just like that, poof, all her abdominal pain was gone."
- Kilen13
Boringly Healthy
"My doctor told me I was 'boringly healthy.' (I found it amusing, and was happy to know I didn’t have any issues to worry about.)"
- FighterOfEntropy
"When a nurse was asking me about drug usage, alcohol, etc, I said, 'No. I'm pretty boring.' She replied with, 'We like boring.' Lol."
- TheZombieJedi
From life-changing diagnoses to odd comments to new rules to live by, there's no question why these were lasting remarks in these Redditors' minds.
