A majority of Brits (38%) believe they have two or three close friends. 22% say they have four or five, and 11% say they have none.

However, one in three (33%) local doctors report having 16 or more friends, while at least one in two have up to 10! The patterns were similar for GPs and hospital doctors.

Part of this discrepancy can probably be attributed to people's desire to cling to those who can potentially consult them on their health questions.

This is a notion that is further supported by a Reddit thread where medical professionals have been listing all the times their friends asked them something they wish they hadn't!

#1

Wishing I had a funny or less depressing answer, but in training I ended up diagnosing and eventually confirming cancer in a hometown friend when he asked me why he sweats through his sheets every night. Cancer free and in remission now, but also doesn’t talk to me anymore.

Image credits: LonelySeeds24

#2

Friend of my then boyfriend asked me „How do you know if you have Syphilis?“ out of the blue one day.

I asked him why he was wondering, he said he was just curious. Sure Bert, sure, we‘re all curious. But if you think you NEED to know if you have Syphilis, the chances are high you have been engaging in Syphilis-enhancing behavior and should get yourself and your downstairs area checked out.

He went to the doctor. He had Syphilis.

Image credits: tryingisbeautiful

#3

Not a doctor, but rather critical care paramedic. I had a long time friend ask me to clarify notes she received from her boyfriend’s oncology visit. Just asking me to translate medical speak. It was one of the worst reports I’ve ever seen and I was amazed he was still alive. She was super hopeful and obviously wanting the best outcome. I gently told her that I was not the one to go over the report with her. He passed about a week later.

Image credits: redundantposts

#4

I have a story of the reverse. I asked my doctor friend about my brain MRI. Had one done to investigate why my voice was so f****d up, and being a nerd I looked at my scan when I got home. I texted the friend and asked them what is white and hazy on a brain scan, so they offered to look at the files. I sent it over. Their response was so professional and telling. I was diagnosed with brain cancer a month later. This was about 3 years ago- my cancer was deleted, and I'm still stable. My voice was unrelated and probably an after effect of covid. I still think about the fact my friend probably knew what was up with my brain that day.... must have been hard.

Image credits: souless_ginger84

#5

I’m a paramedic. And my sister called me when she was contacted by staff that my grandma wasn’t well and they thought she should go to the hospital. My sister asked if I thought she needed an ambulance. All she was told was grandma had an oxygen saturation of 70%

Which is very bad. I managed to calmly recommend the ambulance telling my sister it would just be easier.

Then I got an update from the hospital that she was moved into a “recess” room for more treatment.

Struggled very hard again not to flip out. Managed to avoid correcting her and telling her the term is “resus” which is short for resuscitation.

Amazingly grandma had a terrible pneumonia but pulled through and is doing fantastic.

Image credits: Fianna9

#6

Not a proper doctor but I'm a retired combat medic and I've been asked a couple of odd questions.

At a Christmas party for a charity that my ex used to work with I got chatting to the charity's founder, naturally we got round to "Oh, you're X's partner? You're not in education too? Oh cool, uh, if you don't mind taking a look at something for me..."

He'd slipped on the stairs a few days earlier, bit of an ache in his upper arm, wasn't sure it was worth going to a doctor. I took a look for him because why not, I'm accommodating.

Reddit, his humerus was broken. Midway, by the feel of it clear through the bone. Not displaced but it was grinding a bit when he moved his arm. That was a fun one to explain.

Image credits: ParticlesInSunlight

#7

Not a doctor, but a nurse. My background is exclusively women's health and NICU. The amount of times my grandfather has asked me about his prostate has made me dread visiting him.

Image credits: kochki711

#8

Not a doctor, but a dentist. When I diagnosed herpes on my underage cousin. I kept her secret cause her parents are super strict.

Image credits: With_Peace_and_Love_

#9

I'm going to go with the time that my uncle sent me an unsolicited picture of his a**s asking if this was a hemorrhoid or not.

Image credits: InvestingDoc

#10

The patient: My wife had a cloudy spot on a brain MRI. They told us it is likely some astrocytoma (brain tumor). My best friend is a radiologist, so I talked to him about it. He explained there are 4 grades. Grade 1 is more common in kids. Grade 2 and 3 are random distributed in the population. Then he says Grade 4 is for "old white guys" and if you get it, you're done. We laugh because my wife is not an "old white guy" so she'll probably have grade 2 or 3 which surgery and chemo can work for. About a week later we got lab results from biopsy. My wife had Grade 4 Glioblastoma Multiforme which the average life expectancy is something like 18 months. It was the kind that repairs itself rapidly from chemo. My wife lasted pretty near 18 months and then passed away. I'm sure my buddy regrets the flippant way he had described the possible outcomes to me, but the "no b******t" talk is kinda how he and I communicate so it didn't damage our relationship.

Image credits: eoattc

#11

Nurse here...I had to interpret my mother's MRI results to her since they popped up in MyChart before she could talk to her doctor. It showed metastatic brain lesions from her intraocular lymphoma, which was terminal. I've never regretted being in the medical field more than I was in that moment.

Image credits: WednesdayGrewUp

#12

I am not a doctor, but I am a respiratory therapist.

During one of the waves of COVID, one of our lab techs mom was admitted and was on a BiPAP with COVID. One night, while we were both working, she asked me how her mom was doing.

I told her I didn't want to tell her because I was not going to lie to her. She told me she wanted to know.

"Everyone I have had on this high of settings on the BiPAP has died. That's not to say we aren't going to keep trying, but i want to be realistic with you."

She started crying. She had just lost her grandmother a week prior, so this was pretty rough. Up until that point, apparently no one had been honest enough to tell her just how serious her mom's COVID was.

Image credits: pwg2

#13

My friend asked me what melanoma looks like and how she could get it. I told her that if she had a mole that looked suspicious, she could send a picture of it to me. She sent me a total of 62 pictures of all the moles on her body over the following weeks And she keeps sending more….

Image credits: Hollandmocro04

#14

Mums friend showed me her MRI scans at a dinner party ahead of seeing her neurologist. The report and pics showed features consistent with multiple sclerosis - there was no way I was having that conversation with her, so I feigned stupidity and said it was outside my knowledge area and told her to discuss it with her doctor instead.

My mom was mad at me for pretending to be dumb. I made it clear that under no circumstances would I be giving any ad hoc medical advice to her friends moving on.

Image credits: Unusual-Ear5013

#15

Occasionally - less often as I and my circle age - someone will, upon finding out that I’m a surgeon, ask, “what’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” The answer is, and has always been, something about which I’ve been trying very hard to avoid thinking, no matter what that is. The worst thing I’ve ever seen is very likely something that I can’t remember and deliberately so.

Image credits: themeanestthing

#16

My wife’s cousin wanted me to see if his testicles had shrank from using steroids. I politely declined.

#17

Not a doctor, but I had one of the hardest talks in my life with my little cousin, who was 13 at the time. He was born with underdeveloped kidneys, and he was diagnosed with chronic kidney insufficiency as a 2 months old baby. Doctors predicted that he could live with meds only until age of 5. He lasted until 13, and he had to start dialysis then. His mother was never supportive. She would just shut down, and the rest of the family would do her work. I will never forget when I visited him in the hospital the day they said that his only treatment now is dialysis or kidney transplant. He asked me what is dialysis and I explained it to him. I was very cautious with the words, and when I explained, he asked me: does that mean that I have to do it my whole life? I didn't want to lie to him, but at the same time I didn't want to upset a 13 year old that already has no father, crazy detached mother and the only chance to live is when you're hooked up to a machine 3x a week. I told him that will last only until he gets a new healthy kidney, and I hope it will happen soon because children have a priority in these situations. No matter what, he has our love and support to go through that. He asked me who will give him the kidney? His mother was afraid to go into surgery, and she didn't want to do it. Others either didn't match or weren't in good health to do so. That meant that he was put on a list. I didn't have the heart to explain to him how that part goes, so I made up a story that sometimes there are people who are willing to help out other people by donating their kidneys to the ones who need them, without the dying part. I will never forget how much I cried in front of the hospital, but I never let him see me worried. He had so much trust in me because I never lied to him. I just made stories which excluded horrible parts of it. His mother never gave him that kind of support to a point whenever medical staff saw me there, they would always let me in, always. Even when I would just stop by to bring him clean clothes or something, they would always invite me in to see him. Doctors and nurses here know better than me how unstable parent he had...

Edit: I forgot to add that he was sad and cried about not wanting to take anyone's kidney because he didn't want someone to give up his kidney in order to give him one. He was so empathetic child.

Sadly, he died 3 years later due to complications with the transplant surgery. We had many hard talks during all that time, and his passing is one of the hardest loses in my life, especially because I was more like a mother to him than a cousin (age gap between us is 13 years only).

#18

Not a doctor, I’m a sonographer. I had a friend I was on a sports team with send me her images from an ultrasound she had performed on a breast mass. It was not good.

Image credits: thnx4stalkingme

#19

Not a doctor, but a paramedic and I think this fits alright. I had my dad and mother call me because my dad was dizzy. He was laying down and they checked his blood pressure and it was fine. I was doing the questioning I normally would and I asked him to sit up and take the blood pressure again and it was low. I asked a few more questions and finally my dad blurts out that he took viagra and it started right after they were.... Intimate. Turns out his new blood pressure medication/ anxiety medication that he has been taking as needed he took that day and he had never taken both medications on the same day. Both affect blood pressure and the combo was most likely the cause of the blood pressure issues. I was glad to help before he walked around and passed out or took them both again another time. But I could have gone my whole life without that knowledge.

Image credits: cierramaranara

#20

My mother once called me because she hurt her ankle and wanted to know if it was broken or just sprained. Then she got mad at me when I said that A) I’m a nurse in B) a completely unrelated field and C) no one can differentiate a sprain from a simple fracture over the phone without an xray or at least an exam.

Image credits: calloooohcallay

#21

Not a doctor, but was a nurse. A friend asked me to come over to dress a wound for her mother - it was a public holiday, which meant that many medical services were closed.

I took one look and immediately could tell that this woman should have been on a couple of very important medications. (Some chronic conditions are obvious to the trained eye). I asked her if she was on them, and she very breezily answered that she had “negotiated “ with her doctor to only take them occasionally. This was obviously a barefaced lie.

My friend was shocked, she had no idea her mother was being noncompliant with meds, which led to a very emotionally fraught conversation about how to ensure her health if she couldn’t/wouldn’t look after herself.

I ended up recommending a geriatric assessment, because legally I’m not permitted to diagnose, but there was a lot more going on than a leg wound.

#22

I’m a midwife and I was teaching a parenting class in high school about labour and birth. One of the students said “my aunt said after she had her baby, her intestines fell out. Is that possible?” All of the 15 yr old girls looked at her in horror and I hesitated (trying not to teach fearful birth lol) and said maybe we can chat after class. That was a great conversation about prolapse!

#23

Not a doctor or medical professional at all.

I grew up in a small town where everyone's phone number started with the same 3 digit exchange. In my mid teens the town had finally grown enough that a 2nd phone exchange was needed. A new doctor's office ended up with a number on the new exchange that had the same last 4 digits as my family's home.

We would get so many wrong numbers where the moment we would say hello the caller would launch into the most graphic description of various body parts oozing various fluids.

I get people mistaking us for the doctor's office, but was baffled that they thought the doctor was answering their office phone direct and not a receptionist.

Edit for autocorrect typos.

#24

I read my dad’s scans and labs and figured out he had liver cancer (melanoma that metastasized to the liver). The doctors kept beating around the bush and giving my mom and dad a lot of hope. I knew. He ended up dying 7 days later.

#25

I don’t know about “wish they hadn’t,” because I was happy to be there for my friend. But I was an EMT and also worked in hospitals and eventually specialty medical technician stuff. A friend of mine got her lab results in MyChart late at night and couldn’t talk to her doctor before the morning. I had to explain to her, at like 23 years old, that she had type 2 diabetes.

Not good news and also it was during COVID, so that was extra scary for her.

Image credits: _Oops_I_Did_It_Again

#26

Nurse not a doctor but having to explain genital warts and STI transmission with my mother is something I wish I could forget.

#27

Can you read my husbands MRI report…. Report clearly shows metastatic cancer. Oof.

Image credits: Boogersnsnot

#28

Not sure if this counts. I'm not a Doctor, but I work in a hospital in a medical field, so obviously my family all think I'm an expert. My mum ended up in hopsital after a series of falls. She had an MRI scan, followed by emergency surgery. The Surgeon wrote up the report to my mums family doctor, but it was in another language which my Dad doesn't speak, so he forwarded it on to me.

My mother had had a bowel tumour some 4 years earlier, and it had metastacised to the brain - 2 distinct tumours, the second proved inoperable. Three months later she was dead.

#29

Not a doctor, but since people are telling stories…

My grandmother (a former nurse) asked me to take her to her doctor’s appointment, which involved a routine chest x-ray. I was a nurse working in radiology at the time; I knew the tech at the office and got to have a look at her x-ray immediately after it was shot. She had a massive mass in her chest and pleural effusion… how she wasn’t symptomatic was beyond me.

I must have had a look on my face, because she said “I’ve got cancer, don’t I?”

She passed away less than a month later.

#30

I went to emergency with an acquaintance to get his chest and abdominal x-rays, only to watch with the tech as the cr scanner slowly revealed a sea of white. Metastatic stomach cancer. It was a long walk back with him to his cubicle. No words were spoken but he could read my face.