It is truly amazing how patients can be such liars. I had a patient who we had operated on for one of her gynecologic cancers. She was recovering well and at least in our view she was ready to go home. When I went to pre-round on her though she asked if she could be sent home tomorrow because she has a terrible headache (onset of 10 min. ago) and her brother and fiance are moving her to another apartment today so she doesn’t want to g home while they are in transition. The requests were reasonable enough but if she doesn’t have a medical reason to be there anymore then she has to go home, which my senior resident told her. So when we rounded on her with the attending an hour later she all of a sudden had some cough and she told the attending she had been coughing all night (which she hadn’t). He asked her if she had any nausea or vomiting and she said yes emphatically (which she didn’t just an hour ago). He asked her if she had abdominal pain and she said yes. So the attending decided to keep her one more day. The resident was looking and me the whole time just shaking his head. We couldn’t believe the acting job that just occurred; it was all I could do to not jump up on her bed and point, “YOU LIAR”!!!!, lol. But hey what can you do.
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