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Grandpa learns he's "pregnant" at Oregon ER
Categories: Weird But True
"Could you be pregnant?" If you're a woman of child-bearing age, it's one of the first questions you'll hear when you need medical treatment.
But 71-year-old granddad John Grady Pippen was never asked that question, for obvious reasons, when he visited an Oregon ER. So he was surprised when his discharge paperwork carried a surprise diagnosis. "Based on your visit today," it said, "We know you are pregnant." When John started having stomach pain, I'm sure that pregnancy was the furthest thing from his mind, given his age and, oh, his gender.
An errant keystroke was blamed for the error and John was never actually treated as a pregnant patient, which means he wasn't forced to swallow any of those giant-sized prenatal vitamins or to lay on a table with a bursting bladder while an ultrasound tech rubbed goo all over his belly.
I'm sure John's getting plenty of chuckles out of his story. Did you have a surprise pregnancy? How did you find out?
But 71-year-old granddad John Grady Pippen was never asked that question, for obvious reasons, when he visited an Oregon ER. So he was surprised when his discharge paperwork carried a surprise diagnosis. "Based on your visit today," it said, "We know you are pregnant." When John started having stomach pain, I'm sure that pregnancy was the furthest thing from his mind, given his age and, oh, his gender.
An errant keystroke was blamed for the error and John was never actually treated as a pregnant patient, which means he wasn't forced to swallow any of those giant-sized prenatal vitamins or to lay on a table with a bursting bladder while an ultrasound tech rubbed goo all over his belly.
I'm sure John's getting plenty of chuckles out of his story. Did you have a surprise pregnancy? How did you find out?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
LS 9-29-2008 @ 10:20PM
Mine was sort of a surprise. We weren't really trying (just 'messing about'....), and I felt all weird one day. I'd been spotting a tiny bit, which was unusual for me, and just felt "off". So that evening, when my husband came home from work, I took a home pregnancy test on a whim.
When it came back positive, he said, "Leave it to YOU to screw up a pregnancy test!!!"
Reply
MJZimmer88 9-29-2008 @ 11:24PM
In high school there was an epidemic of the Whooping Cough going around our high school. Anyone who coughed in class would immediately be sent home for 5 days, sent to the doctors office, given an examination and throat culture, and prescribed the antibiotics immediately. A few days later the doctors would receive the results, and call up the students and tell them if they could stop taking the antibiotics due to negative tests. My doctor called me with some good and bad news. The bad news was, they didn't have the results for my whooping cough, because they had sent it through the wrong tests, checking for pregnancy. The good news was, I wasn't pregnant. (Just as a quick side note... I'm also male.)
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Mom of Three 9-30-2008 @ 10:39AM
While this is pretty comical - it does illustrate the true dangers of medical mistakes. Smart patients must check & triple check everything.... If it wasn't for a low level intern assigned to my brothers cancer case over a memorial day weekend, we never would have known his isolated stomach cancer had actually spread to his liver requiring removal of 2/3 of that liver :( Many, many other doctors had seen the same scans yet NONE had "noticed" the spots all over his liver. He'd been given a diagnosis and treatment plan of surgery and radiation for the large stomach tumor only.... Unfortunately, by the time the cancer was found to have spread, it was very, very late. He did not survive. And these were two of the best hospitals in the world located in the Northeast...
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Sabrina 9-30-2008 @ 6:53PM
If by surprise pregnancy you mean taking a pregnancy test to PROVE to my co-worker that I "just had the flu" and being utterly shocked to see two lines, then yes, I have.
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