Please note that I am not referring to awesomely stupid MOMENTS on tv medical dramas. I’m not interested in House: MD showing its title character being able to walk without a limp because he was temporarily pain-free, even though an earlier episode went out of its way to establish that a huge hunk of his right thigh was missing; nor do I mean the incredibly cursed nature of County General on ER.
No, what I’m looking for is patients on these shows who largely bring their suffering on themselves because they lie to their doctors for stupid reasons or do other stupid things. The families of the patients also qualify.
The first one who comes to mind is from the aforementioned House. It was an early episode, in which the patient’s parents deliberately and consciously omitted from their son’s medical history the fact that he was adopted, because they loved him as much as they would have if he were biologically related to them. Then they were shocked–SHOCKED–to find that, yes, the child’s genetic heritage might be relevant when trying to diagnose an unknown disease.
I can’t think of a specific example, but it seems like when I’ve caught an episode of House the patient was usually lying about a pre-existing condition, other medication/drug use, sexual behavior, or other obviously relevant issues. I can understand being embarrassed about some aspect of your personal life and not wanting to share it with strangers, but these patients are usually aware that their lives are in danger!
Back when I used to watch ER, I often found myself shouting at the screen during traumas when the patient’s family was in the room freaking out, getting in the way, yelling, “What’s happening?! What are you doing to her??!! Help her!!! Oh my God, Why is [the doctor] doing THAT??”
I know that they’re supposed to be upset, but OMG shut up, get out of the way, and let the doctors work!! If they’re stopping to explain every damned thing to your ignorant ass, they’re not keeping the patient from being DEAD. There will be time to explain LATER.
There was an episode of the old drama Emergency! where the father of a desperately sick three-year-old resists treatment because he’s convinced his son has Tay-Sachs disease. Of course, the boy’s never been tested for it, but the father just knows. It turns out that the boy doesn’t have Tay-Sachs, but he is diabetic, which is why he was sick; the father wouldn’t allow treatment for anything, so the diabetes went uncontrolled until the boy lapsed into a coma. Oh, yeah, and the guy never told his wife about any of this, but he did forbid her from taking the boy to the doctor. What a boob.
Another episode involves the parents of a girl who was bitten by a dog. The girl needs rabies shots, but since the parents are fundies, they’re resistant to the idea of that because they think it’s God’s will if their daughter gets sick, and they think God is testing their faith. Dr. Brackett sends the hospital chaplain to talk to them, and in the end, they agree to the shots.
There was an episode of ER where a largely overweight man was on a “shake” diet - blending all kinds of fatty food into shake form and declaring them healthy - after having his stomach stapled. IIRC he busted his staples.
Actually, IIRC, the family was giving the boy’s real genetic history. They weren’t telling House what diseases they and their parents had, but the ones the boy’s biological family had. The problem occurred because everyone assumed the boy was vaccinated before he was adopted, but he wasn’t, and had caught a disease most people are immune to.
But there are a LOT of stupid patients on House, which is where half the fun comes from.
How about the couple on last night’s ER that followed their GPS instructions and drove into Lake Michigan because they are such rigid rule followers they couldn’t believe their GPS was wrong? I immediately lost interest in them.
I remember the first episode; what happened in the latter case?
I also have another nomination: I seem to recall an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where a young football player injured his hand (or perhaps a foot) and ignored the surgeons’ advice because he wanted to play in some crucial game that would be seen by a scout. He instead followed some advice he had gleaned from the 'net, and as a result lost the injured hand (or foot).
I remember laughing out loud as the character repeated, over and over, “But…but…but I read it in Wikipedia! How can something on Wikipedia be wrong?”
I also root against the contestants on that Howie Mandel show with the briefcases whenever I forced to watch.
They believed the disease was sent from their deity, and so had never tried to develop any treatments for it. Normally it only affected colony worlds, but this time had spread to the homeworld and all outposts. The aliens secluded themselves in an attempt to ‘atone’ for whatever had brought this on them. Needless to say, it didn’t help.
There’s a brilliant scene where Lenier and Delenn (who joined the seclusion to provide guidance and comfort) emerge, leaving nothing but dead bodies behind them.
My memory is a bit different. The kid was in fact vaccinated, which was reported correctly. But they didn’t know that the kid’s biological mother was never vaccinated herself, so she passed on whatever it was to the kid in the womb. So he had it before he was even born and the fact that he was vaccinated fooled everyone.
That matches with my memory. What made it so stupid was the fact that the parents refused so long to admit that the kid was adopted, because they were sure it could not matter since they knew everything about his life. Obviously they could NOT know everything, because they hadn’t been there at the very beginning of it.
On another episode, a father, when asked whether he had ever been out of the country, deliberately did not mention spending 2 years in India because he did not wish to admit to having been scammed by a guru. His time in India was relevant because he had slow-acting leprosy and had unknowingly passed it on the patient fo the week, his son. At the end of the episode, the kid is naturally filled with rage
Actually I think the germ of House’s genius lies in his assumption that his patients are both idiots and liars. He’s wrong that it’s true of EVERYONE, but the majority of the patients who get to him create their problem by refusing to man up.
But it didn’t matter anyway because House knew the kid’s parentage was in question as soon as he walked into the hospital. He even had a bet going with his team that the kid’s father wasn’t his biological father. All the doctors spend the whole episode debating if the mother was unfaithful or what and no one has the nerve to ask about the kid’s parentage. Finally House gets sick of it and confronts the parents who say “Sure, the kid was adopted. We even told Cuddy but no one else asked. And we answered all the questions we were asked about his medical history correctly. So there too!”
That’s when House figures out that it must have been the biological mother who wasn’t vaccinated.
And House wins the bet. He know the kid’s father wasn’t biologically related to him because the child had a cleft chin which can only come form a parent with a cleft chin. (I think I’m remembering the give away correctly.)
Honestly, I don’t know why I remember this episode in such detail.
Sadly, I know it happens with alarming frequency. Child gets sick from some preventable and/or treatable disease, parents refuse preventive and/or treatment for religious reasons, child dies.
Wow. Someone better not let The Office fans. They’ll be pissed that they can’t say The Office is unrealistic anymore because Michael Scott drove into a pond because his GPS told him to.
