“During my clinical rotation, I was caring for a patient with a diagnosis of ’alien arm syndrome.‘ One day, her arm just started moving on its own. She lost control over it.”

Note: If you're a hypochondriac (like me, LOL), proceed with caution. And make sure to connect with a medical professional before making any changes to your daily health routine.

"I felt pretty cool as a student nurse, but also horrified at the idea that this could be an unexpected death sentence for one of my patients. The doctor asked the patient if she had eaten raw cow meat, and the patient had told the doctor she had been eating 'tiger meat' for the past 40 years. 

The alien arm progressed into an alien leg within a matter of days. Before my clinical rotation had ended, her opposite arm had begun twitching on its own, too. She was in her early 60s and was very healthy before. 

Several weeks later, I was doing a different rotation and ran into the doctor, and asked how the patient was doing. He had told me the LP fluid they sent off to Mayo had come back and said mad cow disease was her official diagnosis. She would have died within that year."

"Whenever the person eats carbohydrates like bread, pasta, or soda, the yeast ferments those sugars directly into ethanol right inside the digestive tract. A standard carb-heavy lunch can send their BAC soaring. People have lost jobs, wrecked relationships, and faced DUI charges before a specialist finally puts them in a locked observation room, feeds them a high-carb meal with zero access to alcohol, and watches their BAC climb in real time. Once diagnosed, a course of targeted antifungals and a low-carb diet usually clears it up completely."

"She was being treated for hypotension for months when she actually had severe hypertension, but they had been checking the wrong arm. We sent her to a vascular surgeon who cleared her arteries, and I got her on antihypertensives, and she stabilized! Now I tell everybody to ALWAYS check BOTH arms if something seems off."

"In 2018, my mf’ing CAT got an intussusception. I had to rush her to the closest vet for emergency surgery, and they removed a whole mess of her colon. The vet described her intestines as 'tangled like a garden hose.' What the hell? AND NOW, at this moment, as we speak, my future father-in-law is in the ICU of a hospital after getting a section of his intestines removed. Tomorrow, he shall go back into surgery to have things reattached. So the question remains: what is it about me that causes people nearby to get their insides all fucked? My intestines are fine as far as I know; all I’ve ever had removed is my gallbladder. How mysterious."

"They started her on all the medications, and none of them worked. Eventually, one of our doctors (who has been a neonatologist since before neonatology existed as its own specialty) talked with the family, who were VERY crunchy and VERY upset that their daughter wasn't improving. He just straight-up asked the mom, 'Do you take iodine?' She said that she does. The entire unit just breathed a whole sigh of relief. The biggest irony, much like a case in House, was that the baby's condition was completely inflicted upon her by her mother, who swore that she knew better than the doctors."

"I prescribed a typical care plan, heavy on the benzos to keep him from seizing due to withdrawal. This treatment is pretty reliable, and by day four, he should have been out of the woods in terms of life-threatening seizures. On day five, though, this mf'er has a violent grand mal that scared the shit out of a nurse who has seen a ton of seizures like that. It didn't make sense, so we did a neuro workup and sent him off for imaging. 

The radiologist came back, identifying a glioblastoma in this poor man's brain. The man's entire personality went off the rails, turning him from a great husband and father to an abusive alcoholic, and it was all because of a tumor. We followed up a few times; he was actually really lucky, and last I heard, he was still alive, getting treatment. The tumor was partially resected, after which he returned to his prior demeanor and stopped drinking entirely. Unfortunately, the type of tumor he has isn't survivable long-term, and even if he makes it to that five-year mark, it'll be a miracle."

"We rarely do these without a good reason, but something wasn't making sense. Since I didn’t really know what I was looking for, I checked pretty much every box for the lab to test, one of which came back positive. He had anti-NMDA Encephalitis, which is incredibly rare and unfortunate. He never came back around. He had multiple seizures, ended up on a ventilator, and got transferred to our academic mothership. He couldn’t be extubated successfully, so he ended up with a trach & PEG. I never saw any substantial improvement."

"My toxicology professors would joke that they’d use ringing ears as a sign you’d had enough aspirin back when aspirin was the miracle drug for everything."

"The only long-term result is that I now have epilepsy, which has been controlled for more than 11 years."

Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.