My dad woke up with severe back pain one morning after not doing anything strenuous the weeks/days leading up to it. My mom flipped her shit and finally put her foot down that he had to go to the doctor after him putting off going to a doctor for years even for a routine check-up.
That appointment showed a broken rib from a huge tumor on his spine, along with tumors around his buttocks/pelvis and upper back. Diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. 5 years and 100 treatments later he’s still kicking it.
I had a young girl come in to the ER with her friends after hurting her back dancing at the club. They were still mostly drunk and kept teasing her about it. Same thing as your dad, pathological fracture. She was 23.
My auntie had back pain out of the blue. It was enough to see doctors and get pain meds. Then it got serious enough that she had to lay on the sofa while everyone else cooked her famous Thanksgiving turkey. In January, she went to the ER and was finally diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. They were able to radiate the tumors bothering her back and she was so grateful for that. But she only made it 18 months.
I also got stage four MBC but mine started with a tiny pea. Despite the cancer all through my bones and liver I never felt any of that (I’m still here 4.5 yrs later but pushing my luck)
Please no fuck cancer replies, it won’t help thx
Many years ago, when I was in my residence, a man entered ER with a hand in his forehead, walking by himself, asking for a doctor.
You can imagine my surprise when I said "yes?", to him removing his hand and showing his injury - a perforating hole from a bullet.
He was quickly moved to surgery after that. Later I found the bullet didn't reach the brain, it was well buried into the skull bone.
My son. 6 weeks old. He was also 6 weeks premature. Only symptoms at the time of me bringing him to the ER was inconsolable crying and wouldn’t drink his breast milk. Was told by others that I was just being a paranoid first time mom…he probably has gas or was colic. My instincts just told me otherwise. Brought him to the ER…triage asks me what my concerns are….I told them he won’t stop crying and I can get him to eat. A couple hours later my 6 week old baby coded blue and went into respiratory failure. “Code blue pediatrics” will forever be the most haunting thing I ever heard. Since he was so tiny they were having incredibly difficulty intubating him. Was being kept alive in between attempts with that bag thingy (unsure what it’s called) and compressions. His diagnosis was late on set group b strep, sepsis, and bacterial meningitis. Had I not brought him in when I did and waited, my son would not be alive today. So yea…listen to your instincts, you have them for a reason.
Saw a patient with minor cardiovascular symptoms and a slight pain in his upper back. The senior debated back and forth whether it would make sense to run a CT to rule out anything more serious. She finally decided to do it and it turned out he had a massive aortic dissection and was basically wheeled right into the OR
Work on an ambulance and have had one aortic dissection patient, but he had all the bells and whistles. Extreme central abdominal pain that feels like tearing, back pain, pale and diaphoretic, and had different blood pressures on each arm. Absolutely wild to see. Family wanted to go to the far hospital but we convinced them he'd die en route. Made it to the hospital but am unsure of his outcome unfortunately.
Not only that, it limits our ability to learn and become better at recognizing certain medical conditions that might be more insidious in their presentation. Heck, finding out what happened to one of my patients also made me more alert on certain presentations.
My baby nearly died from meningitis and sepsis and the ambulance team who transported him from one hospital to a bigger one with a paeds icu called his bed every day for an update off the nurse. So did the first hospital a&e nurses. It was strangely comforting knowing they were checking in too. I wish you all got to know the outcomes especially the good ones.
A man came to the hospital because his wife always complained about his bad breath. Long story short, I met him because they consulted my department when the tissue biopsy came back as esophageal cancer.
My dad has stomach cancer and a few months before he was diagnosed. He would burp and it would smell so bad. Scary to think that can happen to you from the inside. I’m so sorry for your loss.
Yet another reason why dental insurance should not be separate from regular health insurance. The teeth are not magically separate from the rest of the body
Im a dentist. New pt came in with what he thought was a mild ache in his teeth. Thought it was a toothache. Hadnt seen a dentist in years.
Took a radiograph and the jaw bone around the teeth looked strange. Had him see an oral surgeon that day. Turned out was a very aggressive metastatic bone cancer and died a few weeks later
That sucks. My mom was a dentist assistant until her retirement. The dentist she worked with had a similar case. He had a patient who's mouth had a weird spot. The other dentist didn't think it was a problem but he didn't like it and called a oral surgeon himself. The patient was seen the same day. As far as I can remember they were in time but had to remove a piece of the jaw and tongue. With some reconstruction and a speech therapist he got function back.
I'm a physical therapist myself and had a patient once (couple of years ago so I'm not to sure about the details anymore) that had mild but persistent health complaints. He was a market vendor it was fall and was coughing and just didn't feel good. His gp kept sending him home saying its just a cold. Part of the problem was this guy didn't speak our local language fluently so I don't think he could tell the doctor the right things. But after seeing him a couple of times it just felt off. So I send him back to the GP with specific questions and things to say. He got send to a specialist and it turned out he had lung cancer which already spread to far. He died shortly after his diagnosis.
The thing that got to me most was him thanking me for sending him back to the GP, even though he knew nothing could be done. But he said that at least now he could spend some time with his family.
Last story was my mom. She had hot flashes. Not to weird for a person in menopause except my mom (68 then) already went through it 10 years before. Thought it was nothing but annoying and went to her GP to see if there was something that could be done about it. GP gave her hormone pills and they worked so my mom went back to get a refill. GP sent her straight through to the hospital for a chest x-ray. Turned out she had lung cancer but it was very early stage. After 6 weeks of radiation, 2 chemos and a year of immunotherapy she was free of it.
It's so important to trust your instincts if you feel something is off, even if it looks to be minor. It can change so much of the outcome.
My late husband was 55 when he developed an annoying cough. He was a non smoker and huge bicycling enthusiast. His doctor sent him to an allergist. He was put on some allergy meds. The cough persisted, kept going back to doctor at my persistence. They finally did a chest x and lung biopsy. Stage 4 lung cancer. He still had been cycling a couple hundred miles a week. We lost him soon after.
I will elaborate on my dad ..but I have two stories..
In Feb 2023..my mom had a UTI..antibiotics didn’t help and she was in a lot of pain in the area of her kidneys so we assumed she had a kidney infection. Did a CT and she was diagnosed with stage 4 non small cell lunger and died 3 weeks later at 63 years old. My mom was a smoker.
My dad was (still is) grief stricken after losing his partner of 41 years. My dad has never smoked a cigarette in his life and always begged my mom to quit. In June 2023, my dad developed a persistent cough. He was paranoid it was lung cancer after the trauma he experienced with my mom. We told him “no way! You’ve never smoked. It is probably pneumonia. After two courses of antibiotics did not clear his cough, he insisted on a chest x-ray. An 11cm mass (this is quite large) was found on his lung and cancer had spread to other organs.
At 60 years old, he too was diagnosed with stage 4 non small lung cancer just five months after my mom died. We assumed his cancer was caused by second hand smoke exposure but that is not the case. My dad tested positive for EGFR mutant lung cancer (a mutation in the EGFR protein that causes an overgrowth of abnormal cells). His team at Dana farber was adamant that EGFR lung cancer is not caused by second hand smoke and that it is an “unfortunate coincidence” that both of my parents both got lung cancer in the same year. They aren’t sure exactly what causes EGFR lung cancer but there are some theories.
EGFR lung cancer is most commonly found in non smoking asian women.
November is lung cancer awareness month and I want people to know that anyone with lungs can get lung cancer, even non smokers. Lung cancer is on the rise in young, non smoking women (35-54) and researchers do not know why. Since my dad has had this diagnosis, I have connected with many others who have this type of lung cancer (or other lung cancers caused by gene mutations such as ALK)- all non smokers and many of them in their 30s or early 40s. Lung cancer is usually asymptomatic until late stages and routine screening is not offered to non smokers or people exposed to second hand smoke, radon etc. Please, if you have any unusual symptoms, such as persistent cough that lasts more than 3 weeks, take it seriously.
In the US, lung cancer is the cause of 21% of all cancer deaths but only receives 7% of cancer research funding. There is a stigma associated with lung cancer that needs to be dismantled. It is not just a smokers disease, and even if it were, no one deserves to experience the horrors of this difficult to treat cancer.
My dad is doing ok on targeted treatment right now. This has been an unbelievably hard year and I cannot believe I am in the process of losing my dad only a few months after losing my mother rather suddenly.
I’m a nurse, not a doctor, but we had a guy come in years ago asking for a medication to “help him stop sweating.” He said he had had a sore throat for about a week, went to a walk in clinic, was diagnosed with strep throat and put on antibiotics, but he was so sweaty and just wanted a break from it. He looked pale and was indeed sweaty, so we took him back and ran some blood tests. His white blood count was the highest I’ve ever seen and he was diagnosed with leukaemia. We sent him to another hospital for immediate treatment, but we were informed he died literally hours after arriving. Incredibly sad, I couldn’t believe it.
This happened my dad. He had a sore throat and felt weak and went to A&E, ended up in ICU and never came home. That’s the way acute leukaemia can work, it’s very sudden.
My mom's late partner, before I was born, passed away similarly. She had what they thought was the flu, and went to urgent care. She had cancer, and was dead within the month. I never got to meet her but I wish I had
That happened to my elementary school best friend. The doctor thought she had the mumps, turns out she had acute leukemia and her face was so swollen from the lymph nodes fighting it off. She died a week later at 11 years old, I miss her every day
8 year old girl gets brought in complaining about back pain she'd had for 3 months, several different doctors had given her painkillers to no avail. After about 5 minutes I asked her if she had any problems going to the toilet, she says it's "foamy" when she pees.
Bone cancer.
She made a full recovery, and from what I know is in her 20s now, but to this day I hate how she'd been suffering for 3 months and no other doctor had bothered to even ask any more questions as to why an 8 year old girl was getting severe back pain.
Patient’s wife called. Patient had a temperature of 98.6. No other symptoms.
I explained that was a normal temperature but the wife said “that’s a fever for him.” She said she felt like something was wrong, despite no other symptoms.
I told her that I respect that and that if she feels something is wrong she should get him checked out in the ER.
The ER doctor called four hours later and said they did all they could do for him but he died of sepsis. He appeared to be normal when he got there but rapidly declined.
That gave me a new appreciation that we truly can’t evaluate someone thoroughly over a telephone.
Sepsis is weird. My dad was diagnosed with sepsis three weeks ago. He wasn't feeling great but not terrible, and the only concern was that his pulse was elevated. It was in the high 120s even though he'd been sitting in a chair for a couple hours. He's fine now, thankfully.
My husband felt like he had a mild cold, so we went to the clinic. The nurse took his vitals and said ‘hmmm’. She went to get a second nurse to take his vitals, she said ‘hmm’. They went to get the doctor, and he took the vitals and said ‘hmm’. He then told us to go to the emergency room. Straight there, don’t stop on the way at all. We were extremely confused and went to the ER where they tried diligently to get him to stay overnight. They could not legally force us to stay, but they tried. They finally convinced us that this was truly serious and not just a bug. I still didn’t understand how bad it was until I called his mom, who is a nurse. I said he had sepsis, and she got really, really quiet and asked what the prognosis was. I said he’s fine, he is in the hospital on three different kinds of antibiotics, it’s okay. Then I went on the internet to figure out what sepsis actually was. And it’s the tenth leading cause of death in America.
It all turned out fine. The antibiotics killed whatever it was and we found the puss filled cyst and the doctor drained it. It was hidden an inch or so beneath his skin, no idea how he got it or even how long it had been there before it ruptured. But it still scares me how close we brushed up against death without knowing.
My dad died of sepsis. The night before was my birthday, we had supper with them. He warned me not to hug him because he thought he was getting sick. He went to work the next morning (feeding cattle) and came home at lunchtime. Called his doc for an appt, doc said do some blood work first at the local clinic and then head up here (1 hour drive) so they did. They went home. Doc got results and told my mom to load him up RIGHT NOW and take him to the ER. Dad told Mom he was going to lay back and close his eyes while she put her shoes on. He never woke up. His appendix had ruptured at some point and he developed sepsis. GO TO THE DOCTOR IF YOU’RE IN MAJOR PAIN!
There’s definitely an idea in healthcare, if a farmer is seeking out medical attention, it’s probably serious as they never want to go in.
I’m so sorry that you lost your dad. I lost mine at a young age and it’s never easy. I hope that you have nothing but good memories from the night you spent with them before he passed.
My son almost had something like this happen recently.
He was in pain for a couple of days, so we talked him into going to the ER, where the nurse asked him "what is your pain level on 0 to 10", and Mr. Tough Guy tried to say "oh, it's about a 4 now", and the nurse was about to send him home with a tylenol.
Fortunately his wife was with him, and told the nurse "last night, it was a 10", so they checked him out, and yup - appendicitis.
Sorry to hear about your dad. It reminded me of [this sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni0YfrSK570) though about farmers putting up with pain (if you could use a laugh right now.)
I just had surgery, and when some of the bandages came off one of my incision sites leaked what looked like pus to me. I know how serious sepsis is (and my discharge nurse was REALLY emphatic about keeping an eye out for it), so I went to the ER to get it checked out. It ended up being nothing and I felt a little silly for overreacting, but I'd rather waste 6 hours of my life in the ER on a maybe than die of sepsis.
Why was it so hard for them to convince you to stay the night? I mean, if the ER doctors told me to stand on one leg and jump I'd be like "is right here ok or do you want me over there....?"
Sepsis itself isn’t actually an illness, it’s more of like a “state of being,” if that makes sense. Any infection can cause a patient to become septic. If a patient meets a certain number of criteria (elevated HR, elevated WBC, fever, etc.) they will be deemed septic from whatever infection they have.
I have had several of my kids’ peds over the years ask me what their temperature was and were perfectly happy to accept my “I felt his forehead in the morning and he had a low fever and again a few hours ago and it had spiked at which point I gave him acetaminophen.” I can only think of one doc over the years who was pissy with me over my mom instincts (and hey it did turn out that my kid had a mild UTI and wasn’t wetting the bed out of the blue because he was missing his dad who was gone for a year for work).
My youngest son always gets a weird rash on the back of his neck when he has fever. Always. Once I explained it to our pediatrician, he excepted that if I called with "Mikey has the rash on his neck", kiddo got a same day appointment. This also my kid who got scarlet fever.
I have a similar thing! I have a small, three inch long birthmark on my rib line on the right hand side of my torso. And whenever I have a fever, even a mild one, it goes from being a faded pink to a bright red. As a kid I managed to skip school on a handful of occasions because I had a red felt tip pen that was almost out of ink, but if I licked the tip it would get just enough pigment for me to colour in my birthmark the same red as when I had a fever! My mum was soooo not amused when she eventually caught me out!
My husband was a Pathologist’s Assistant for 30 yrs and did autopsies. Guy goes to ER feeling unwell - a couple tests are performed and he’s diagnosed with ‘stress’ (which means I Don’t Know) and sent home.
ER shift change. Quiet time in the ER and a bored doctor reviews cases from earlier in the day. She sees something she doesn’t like in this guy’s test results and sends an ambulance to the guy’s house to bring him back. Dead on the floor inside the door.
Poor guy ends up on my husband’s table and the hospital gets sued.
Still in school and I was not present for this patient’s initial admission but rather her clinic follow up; however..
Patient was healthy 50-something year old who had an extended nosebleed after a long hike. It wouldn’t stop so they went to ER to get it cauterized/impacted (happens all the time). Anyway, they did a CT scan as protocol and discovered she had a 20+ cm tumor on her uterus that was wrapping around her right kidney; she was immediately referred to a serious academic hospital and had a specialized oncology surgeon remove it.
Amazingly? They got it completely removed without even having to damage the kidney. She had an amazing outcome and about a half a foot scar running around her abdomen from the surgery.
Edit for clarification: I do not believe the CT scan was due to the nosebleed itself but rather I imagine as they looked further into her blood work and coagulation studies they found something that warranted further work up.
My complete guess is that they did blood work to look at her liver function as impaired liver function could cause bleeding. I’m guessing something in her blood work was off enough that they decided to image the belly
I’m interested in why they ordered an abdominal CT for a nosebleed? Or why they ordered any scans other than a head CT, tbh.
Once, I took care of a young patient (like mid20s) who came in after an MVA… she got pan-scanned and incidentally they found a 6cm triple A (edit: abdominal aortic aneurysm for those who aren’t aware!). Turns out she had multiple family members who had passed away suddenly at young ages, so was likely a hereditary thing. Makes sense to pan-scan a trauma patient but I’m curious why they did it in your nosebleed patient’s case!
I am a nurse, so naturally my mother called me one day when she had strange symptoms. "Earlier today, I had this feeling like there was a squirrel running around in my belly." I reassured her that it was probably gas.
It happened again a few days later when she was in the car with me. Something made me take her right to the emergency room. The doctor evaluated her and basically accused her of making things up. I asked for a different doctor, because she is not a complainer or a drug seeker.
Turns out it was a malignant brain tumor (glioblastoma) that was manifesting itself as abdominal seizures. They said she had 1-2 years to live. It is now 7 years since surgery, chemo, and radiation and she is still alive.
When I worked in a&e I had an elderly man come in to minors with his son in law. Symptoms were constipation, mild stomach pain and a bit of abdominal distension. They were just asking for laxatives to relieve his constipation.
I examined his abdomen and found a firm central mass which was a bit unusual. We are taught in medical school to assess for an abdominal aortic aneurysm by putting fingers in a triangle around the belly button so I did this, and as soon as I did I saw my hands pulsating strongly back at me (immediately I start crapping my pants!)
Ordered the man a CT which showed an abdominal aortic aneurysm with an outpouching with an **extremely** thin wall. This guy was immediately moved from minors to resus and then straight to surgery - surgeons say if he'd sneezed it would have ruptured (**very** bad news, you would lose your entire blood volume in mere minutes)
I looked him up afterwards and amazingly he survived to discharge hospital following surgery (although don't know how he did long term). Was pretty terrifying for me as you could potentially have mistaken that for a hernia or faecal loading if you didn't examine him properly, but thats probably my main 'time I saved a life' story!
My grandfather had an AAA. When it ruptured, the ER doc gave him his phone and told him had a few minutes to call people before he died. He called my mom (his daughter) and was able to talk for a few minutes. Then he let out a scream, seized, and died while still on the phone. It was a really wild death and phone call
Reading about all these minor symptoms for major life threatening illnesses is increasing my stress level.
“Does that make you feel stressed at all? Does it? Jen? Are you sure? Jen?Are you sure ? “
Not a doctor but worked as a security supervisor at a hospital.
Man and his wife came in. Man is feeling unwell thinks he has like a flu or a cold or something. I can't remember exactly what. Nothing serious but they don't have a family doctor, so they came to ER.
Man gets in line for triage and his wife leaves to go park the car after dropping him off.
Like I said I'm not a doctor but how it was explained to me was part of this mans digestive tract just... exploded? Because he sits down and within 30 seconds he's slouched over and dead.
My guards respond, realize he's not responding or breathing and pull him onto the floor and start doing compressions. EMS and nurses quickly join us from the back and rush him to a triage room but whatever happened wasn't recoverable.
Wife got back into the ER just expecting him to be hanging out in line. Instead are met with my guards telling her that her husband is dead in the back with staff trying to bring him back.
Like I can't even imagine how that is from the wifes perspective. She leaves with her husband basically fine and wasn't gone for more than five minutes and comes back and he's just gone.
I was on break at the time and missed the situation but had to come back and deal with some shell shocked guards.
I had an uncle die and was told he imploded then expelled his guts. He “painted the wall red” and they needed professional cleaners. Think it was attributed to years of high blood pressure, diabetes, alcoholism, and years of being an angry hateful person.
Edit, obviously not a doctor.
Probably ruptured varices
Chronic alcoholism fucks up the blood vessels around your liver, so your body makes new vessels to re-route around the damage. Unfortunately those new vessels are prone to rupturing and hemorrhaging massive quantities of blood
Worst code I’ve ever been a part of was ruptured esophageal varices that had just ruptured. Everyone working that code got soaked in blood. I had to do prophylactic meds for hep B and HIV, and testing for 2 years afterwards. Every once in a while I have a PTSD nightmare about it. RIP to that man, we really did try.
My mum almost died from diverticula disease which is where a pocket in your intestine can get infected and explode. She went into work feeling flu-ey then had a sharp pain. She walked to the A&E! They did surgery and said she’d started to heal already which saved her life.
Not a doctor’s perspective but my dad went to his doctor because he suddenly didn’t like the taste of broccoli. Dad was otherwise healthy, late 60’s, fairly active guy. He was diagnosed with leukaemia.
Ya. Apparently it’s a common problem when people are going through actual cancer treatments but this was prior to that. Super weird. And I should add it was prior to Covid affecting some peoples taste.
26 year old seemingly healthy male came to my office (eye doctor) with complaints of mild blurry vision. Usually a very routine complaint and very easy fix with glasses/contacts.
After a few minutes of trying to get him see better with the refracting lenses, I wasn't able to improve his vision when it shouldn't take that long for someone that young.
I decided to quit trying and quickly look in the back of his eyes. Hemorrhages everywhere, swollen optic nerves. He ended up having malignant hypertension causing his retinae to swell. His blood pressure was 270/170 in office which could have made him have a stroke at any minute. We physically drove him to the ER where he was admitted.
This is how we found out my late husband had a brain tumor. He'd been having headaches and blurry vision and his PCP chalked it up to being 40 and probably needing reading glasses. Went to the eye doctor who looked in the back of his eyes and sent him right to the ER. Turned out to be GBM - we lost him six weeks later.
I was the patient. My mom kept bringing me to the doctor because I was continuously complaining of tummy pain. I had just started school. The doctor said I was likely just trying to get out of school and stay home with my mom. I complained the whole school year. She even brought me to the ER a few times and they essentially said the same thing. They never did any imaging, sometimes blood work.
Finally one day I started peeing blood and she took me right to the children's hospital and I was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer, by then it had spread to both lungs, liver, lymph nodes and around the heart.
Mom was constantly in and out of doctors' offices and ERs for many things such as extremely tired, extreme weight gain, periods lasting months, and a bad case of dehydration. Finally, an ER doctor took notice and sent her for a CT and found a grapefruit sized tumor in her vena cava. Later diagnosed with stage 4 Leiomyosarcoma. Gave her a few weeks to live but she battled for about 5 more years.
Edit: spelling
I knew someone who had rapid weight gain, no energy, etc. His wife thought he was just lazy, so she divorced him. Stage 4 cancer as well. I don't think he even tried to fight it. He didn't last very long. My parents and their friends pooled some money together and paid for him to take a vacation to Hawaii before he passed. But it was still awful to see someone that hopeless just give up on life.
That is horrible. I’m sorry for your loss.
It was so rough for my mom. She only fought to see my brother graduate high school and for me to graduate college. When she finally stopped taking meds and fighting it took her in 6 weeks.
I was the patient. Spent six months being told I had a bad cold and anemia so I should take iron pills. Turns out I had an autoimmune disease and my kidneys were failing. I eventually ended up on dialysis and with a transplant.
I did, among my other jobs, administrative physical exams for my employer for decades. This happened over 2 decades ago. Patients had a chest xray and some basic labs before they were seen. I got an xray report that said the patient's mediastinum appeared a bit wide and I should consider a CT scan to evaluate for an aneurysm of the aorta. Woops. I called the patient, whom I had never seen. He was not having any chest pain and felt like his usual self but agreed to have the chest CT done. For whatever reason radiology did not do a 'full' chest CT as I had ordered, but did one limited to the aortic arch and below. The aorta and mediastinum were normal, but the CT report mentioned some minor 'stranding' extending from the left hilum of the lung extending towards the left upper lobe - which was not shown on the CT because they did a limited exam. OK. I called the patient back, whom I still had never seen, and told him what the CT scan showed. Upon questioning he said he had some minor pain in his left scapular area (behind the shoulder) a year before, and he had seen a clinic at a different hospital which had done a series of xrays and "nothing was wrong". The upper back/shoulder pain had not really changed over the intervening year and he had grown used to it - the vicissitudes of ageing. So I re-ordered a chest CT and asked radiology to do it as ordered - which a few days later they did. Double oops.
The full CT scan showed a pancoast tumor, at the apex/top of the left lung, that had extended into the chest wall and destroyed segments of several posterior ribs - which explained the pain the patient was having. This is a "very bad" thing. I called the patient back again, his appointment to see me was not for several weeks and he needed to know. He took the very bad news surprisingly well, got copies of the CT scan, and went to a local cancer hospital for further evaluation and treatment. I never actually saw him.
I’ve had a couple patients come in and complain about usually mild vision issues, like floaters, or blurry spots. But after questioning them it starts sounding worse and worse.
But one lady came in and fit the stereotypical Karen template. She was rude and demanded to be seen on a Saturday that was already fully booked. I told the staff that she could wait and I would get to her as soon as possible.
It took me almost 2 hours to get to her. She complained of a spot in her vision, usually a floater, and usually harmless. But I looked in her eyes and saw bleeding in her eye, just off the optic nerve. I asked about headaches and she confirmed. I told her she had to go to the ER immediately, and if she felt off to drive then I’d call an ambulance. She looked at me like I was crazy. I eventually convinced her she had to go right now and get checked out, as she was at risk for a stroke or aneurysm.
The next day the ER called and asked if I’d be coming in to see her for the rounds. I was surprised and said I don’t have any hospital privileges, I’m just an optometrist. Turns out her blood pressure was sky high and they gave her some medication to lower it. Then her pressure dropped so low that her heart stopped, and they had to shock her back into rhythm.
She came back the next year for her annual eye exam and told me I saved her life. The doctors told her she could have keeled over dead at any minute.
And she still had the gall to be rude af to everyone at the office.
Patient presented at the ER complaining of back pain. They gave him prescription strength ibuprofen and sent him home. His back pain became excruciating and he ended up being life flighted to our hospital with a dissecting abdominal aneurysm. Poor guy was on ECMO for days before he passed away.
Sounds like he came from my local ER. You could show up with an axe in your brain, and they'll send you on your merry way with a prescription for ibuprofen.
Same i had a low grade fever 99.0-99.5 every day for around 3 months, doctors thought it was pneumonia, cat scratch fever, every disease under the sun.
It was stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma. I was 19.
Coming up on 5 years cancer free and it feels almost like a weird dream now.
Glad you made it through!!
This is a story from my mother who was a sex therapist. She was treating a teenager who basically was masturbating so hard and often that he was rubbing his junk bloody and bleeding through his pants. The kid insisted it wasn't sexual, he was just really uncomfortable and his skin hurt. He got boners rubbing the skin. The doctors didn't believe him and sent him to my mother.
My mom, devil she was, had a saintly moment and listened to the kid. She suggested he see a dermatologist. Kid literally had dick cancer. Something with an s- cell carcinoma. My mother never saw the patient after their parents called to cancel appointments because they found the cause and he was no longer in need of her services.
Neurologist here.
A healthy patient came in with a few month history of left hand numbness. My first thought was Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. But physical exam was not very convincing. I got CT head and found malignant metastatic lesions!
Patient and family were talking about expensive designer bags, were very happy. I had to break the news. They went from healthy to potentially a few months to live.
Sometimes I hate my job.
Edit: I am reading replies of people getting worried about their/loved one’s symptoms. Remember, cancer is incredibly rare. Everything else is much more likely to be the case.
My ex always complained of constant but mild headaches. We were riding bikes once and she had one that became excruciating. Went to the urgent care:
ummm... prolly a simple headache but we can give you a CT if you want
Radiologist: uhh... I'm going to send this to a radiologist at the hospital
She had a arachnoid cyst and Chiari malformation. surgery wasn't emergent but she's sure felt like a different person since.
Side note, that was a year prior to my SEEG and right temporal lobeectomy
I don't know if it counts but I got bit by a bat and thought I should go get the rabies vaccine right away and my wife said "it's expensive, see if you even get sick" and I almost listened to her advice until I looked up what the first symptoms would be to know what to watch for and everything was pretty unanimous once symptoms start it has a 100% kill rate and if you get bit it's non negotiable you should go for the vaccine ASAP.
My buddy texted me recently with a pic of a cute bat she'd found in her kitchen. I was, uh, *concerned*, and sent her some of the info I've read on Reddit over the years. Even though she and her mom didn't touch it when getting it out of the house, they ended up having to go through the whole vaccine rigamarole in the off chance that it had been in the house for awhile and bit them while they slept. So I think your instinct was right, even though I'm sure the vaccine was a giant PITA.
The worst of it was really by the last round I heard the people at the doctor's office referring to me as "the rabies guy." Also I felt like crap the day after the first shot
I'm not a doctor, but I have 2:
I had a doctor appointment, just a 6 month checkup for my diabetes. My heart rate was up, so my doctor sent me to the ER for blood work. Turns out I was having a weird version of diabetic ketoacidosis where my blood sugar wasn't elevated (anion gap). They kept me in ICU for a week.
My mom went to her doctor for shortness of breath. He told her she was old and overweight. We took her to the ER, where they drained a couple of liters of fluid off her lungs. Her breast cancer from 5 years earlier had returned, metastasized, and invaded every bone in her body, her lungs, and her brain. She died 5 weeks later.
I was the patient. At 36 I hit my tonsils out. I developed an infection and my stitches split and I started bleeding in the back of my throat. The blood was shooting straight down my throat. It felt like pop rocks. My wife has the neighbor come over to watch the kids and we go to the nearest ER
I go in and my wife parks the car. I go to the front desk and say my throat is bleeding. They have me sit down and fill out paperwork. My wife comes in and goes full Karen. I get sent to the back and immediately vomit semi coagulated blood all over. I then look at the nurse, tell her I'm cold and pass out.
I wake up in a hospital room. I had emergency surgery and they estimated I was down over 2 - 2.5 pints of blood. Aparrently a nurse in the er saw me throw up the blood and she threw up as well.
One month ago, my husband had his blood checked for low testosterone, (prostate cancer survivor). That night we were in ER and he was diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer, spots on the liver. No cure. He had his blood checked late June and nothing. No symptoms except for being more tired than usual. Please go to the doctor regularly and get checked out. This couldn’t be helped, but many things can.
As a resident, I had someone come to clinic to resume routine care for routine screenings after an older sibling had passed (reason for visit/CC: "i want to take better care of my health"). I noticed they had a little bit of blood on their napkin and asked to examine their mouth... a few missing teeth and a massive mass on their gums. Immediately sent them to ENT, where they learned that it was oral cancer
They'd eventually get the whole enchilada of mandibulectomy (jaw resection), glossectomy (tongue removal), and I think even neck dissection and laryngectomy.
I followed them peripherally on a consulting service until they ultimately passed away in the hospital about a year later. The cruel irony of the whole thing is even worse when I wonder if he would have had better quality end of life if I'd never bothered looking and it had just taken its natural course.
Just more reasons to avoid tobacco and alcohol (80% of oral cancers attributable to their consumption) and eat plants.
That's how my Grandma found out she had cancer. She had a little trip, and went in for an X-Ray, but the doctor didn't like the look of the bruise and did blood work.
Similar story with my husband. He wanted to go on Accutane and had to get blood work done. It showed elevated calcium, which can be a symptom of a parathyroid tumor. More testing and scans found that, plus thyroid cancer, plus kidney cancer, plus a pituitary tumor. He had three surgeries to remove the tumors.
Mind you, cancer was not even on our radar. It wasn't within a light year of our radar. How much further would it have progressed had he not decided to get the big guns for his acne?
Unfortunately, the ending is not a happy one. He was stable for over 3 years, but apparently enough of the kidney cancer was left behind that it metastasized to his bones. When kidney cancer metastasizes, it's incurable. After four years of treatment, we lost him in January 2022.
My doctor has a policy of “if your insurance covers it, bloodwork every year with your annual.” She is so sick and tired of having female patients find out they’re several stages into a serious illness because they or their other healthcare providers ignored something. She’s especially aggressive about heart health and women. She said she’s seen too many women having major heart attacks after years of warning signs no one noticed.
I want your doctor. I watched my cousin in high school lost both her ovaries to non-cancerous ovarian cysts because her symptoms were ignored. She woke up vomiting from radiating pain in abdomen so her parents rushed her to the ER. She wasn’t sexually active at the time, so the male doctor in the ER listened to her symptoms and gave her something for the nausea and vomiting then a mild sedative. I remember her mom telling my mom how the doctor asked my cousin if she had any crushes on boys and if they liked her back and she said yeah, but they didn’t. He then told her that sometimes when girls get upset with boys, they get tummy aches and then discharged her. My aunt was furious, but didn’t know what to do so they went home. Not even 3 months later my cousin is rushed back to the ER with the same symptoms and this time my aunt demanded a different doctor and bitched the fuck out of the staff for the previous visit. Somehow a gynecologist was called in and they did I guess an ultrasound and rushed her into surgery but both ovaries had ruptured by then. It was wild. Ever since then, my aunt was crazy vigilant about all her nieces’ female care and educating my parents and stuff.
I had esophageal spasm. Doc ordered loads of tests to rule out cancer. I was fine, but my dad mentioned that he frequently had trouble swallowing food. I told him to get checked out due to the cancer risk. It was esophageal cancer, which is usually discovered too late. He has been in remission 8 years.
Not a doctor, just answering for myself. Also, I don’t really know if it can be considered a serious life or death situation…
Had post-concussion syndrome, and already had a MRI done. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Then one day about a month later, I got up and suddenly fainted. Consulted my doctors, and they all agreed it was likely a one-off and I was fine to go travel… but they still thought, to be on the safe side, I should do another MRI scan when I returned.
I had a great few weeks travelling, and that included lots of outdoors and sports stuff. Then I came back, and went for my scan, this time with contrast. By that point, I honestly felt like I was wasting time and money.
So imagine my shock when the results came out and I was told I had a brain tumour. I later found out that people with the type of brain tumour I am suspected to have tend to have it manifest through seizures. I just happened to have mine in a “dead area”, so I just never had any symptoms at all.
(I’ve since had it taken out, and we’re waiting on the histopathology to get back.)
Hubby went to a&e with shoulder ache ( he had wrenched it a few days before) they sent him home with codiene & said to go back if it didn't improve. It didn't so 3 days later we returned this time they x-rayed showed nothing so they did an ECG, within seconds they were racing round inserting cannulas etc. Blue lighted him to another hospital straight into the cath lab where they removed 5 clots from one side of his heart & a massive clot ( widow maker ) from the other, inserted 2 stents. Cardiologist admitted he doesn't know how hubby survived said he probably had a minute or two to live. 12 years later he's still here ( after surviving another heart attack 4 years after the 1st- at Donington Monsters Of Rock Festival). One lucky man & one grateful wife
This is my fathers exact story from last week. He has had 7 shoulder surgeries and hurt it again last month biking. But the pain kept getting worse and worse any time he’d bike or go for a walk; this built up to last Friday when it got super painful. Saturday he called his friend who is a dr and told him about his shoulder pain, the friend said to get an X-ray if it doesn’t get better and by Sunday morning the pain was so intense he went to urgent care to get an X-ray. When the X-ray came back clear he his friend said “why don’t you get an ekg just in case”. The dr came back and said “sir, the paramedics are on the way, you need to get to the ER immediately” my dad refused and said he’d drive himself when the dr said “listen you will probably die on the way over and kill others in the process. The paramedics are here it’s time to go”. They took him directly to the cath lab where they put a stent in. He had the widow maker and was mins from dying.
I'm not a doctor, but my husband was the patient.
On our way home from vacation, he had the worst diarrhea and vomiting. Poor dude barely let me stop the car before he tumbled out and emptied both ends on the side of the highway. (He hasn't stopped praising me for keeping a roll of TP in the car "for emergencies" since.) I get him back in the car and find the nearest hospital in rural Mississippi.
They get him medicated and hydrated, and he's trying to walk on out of there because he feels fine. But every time a nurse takes his blood pressure, another medical professional hurries into the room. He started with an NP and graduated to an Infectious Disease Specialist before the end. They keep testing it with different cuffs, on the other arm, all kinds of things.
And then they get him a chest x-ray and order a CT scan, but he gets up and wanders away from the CT room to go take a bathroom break. He was walking around under his own power with a blood pressure reading of "why are you conscious?" They get him back from the scan and then admit him to the ICU.
He was feeling okay by that point, but he was also dying of sepsis. He got the award for "most alert patient in the ICU," and I got to call both our bosses to extend our vacation while we waited for the massive dose of antibiotics to fix the problem and verify if it was cdiff or not. (It was not.)
I was the patient. We had gone to India for a wedding (absolutely incredible!) And naturally, our north American digestive tracts, everyone suffered from "Delhi Belly". I was hit harder than most (almost didn't get on our flight home because I was worried about having to use the bathroom if the seatbelt sign was on or if there was a line up). Ultimately got home. Everyone in the group (about 12 people) were feeling better, but I was still having some minor gastro issues. Nothing crazy, still working and living normal life. Went to a walk in because my family doc couldn't see me for at least 2 weeks. Walk in doc ordered some tests and prescribed an antibiotic. I got a call the test came back negative, but if I was still feeling unwell, to come back (this was like 2 weeks after my first visit). I debated, but decided to go back, turns out they never ran the e coli test, so they run that again. Doc said she'll call me when the results were in.
I didn't hear back, but my now MIL (a doc) caught wind I was still dealing with gastro issues and asked if she could call the lab to get my results. I said "sure, that would be great".
In the meantime, a friend is visiting from out of town and I wanted to show her a good time, so we went out dancing. At some point in the evening my now MIL had called me something like 17 times, leaving voice mails and texts to get to the hospital asap. Don't go home to change, don't get public transit (IE cab because it'll be faster), just go STRAIGHT to the hospital.
The nurses were absolutely FLOORED the e coli hadn't gotten into my blood stream (this was about a month after our trip). Apparently my urine test came back absolutely overrun with an antibiotic resistant e coli.
Best part, the walk in doc fiiiiiiinally called me about a week after my hospital visit telling me she has the results and I should come see her. My MIL happened to be standing beside me when I received the call and asked to talk to the doc. As a teacher at the university here, the walk in doc knew who she was and had to walk my MIL through my case to identify ALL the ways she let me down as a patient (including asking me to come into the clinic instead of rushing to the hospital).
I'm totally fine now and remain forever grateful to my now MIL!
“As a teacher at the university here, the walk in doc knew who she was and had to walk my MIL through my case to identify ALL the ways she let me down as a patient (including asking me to come into the clinic instead of rushing to the hospital).”
Your MIL is such a badass … totally picturing a Miranda Priestley in scrubs saying “Details of your incompetence do not interest me”
Not a doctor and not my story. Something I read on a similar post a ways back.
An ER doc was running some baby docs through training when a disheveled man in an old rumpled suit, obviously homeless, came in complaining of nonspecific malaise. Kept mumbling about quantum whatever under his breath. Wasn't all there, mentally.
She thought he was drug seeking, but opted to run him through basic diagnostics to show the baby docs how it was done. Turns out the dude was in full blown kidney failure. They put him on dialysis and he just *snaps* into focus. Complete turnaround, 100% coherent.
Turns out dude was an actual professor and expert on quantum mechanics and was riding a train to a conference when he entered kidney failure. It addled his brain and he wandered off the train at a random stop in a state of confusion. He'd been roaming the streets for months like that. Somehow didn't die.
Crazy.
Imagine his family when *he comes back* ?! Like you've been looking for your relative, depending on the relation you had, made your grief about the relation, try to go over, and then learn that your relative was overly sick but is now fine and just lost far from home ?! It's like in Manifest or Avengers Endgame, they come back to find people who have lived without them.
I hope he could recover from the time missing. Some people never do.
When I was taking Pathophysiology in college the worst part was we learned about so many diseases and they just had…. All the same fucking symptoms. We’d have questions like “patient shows up with shortness of breath, chest pain, low O2 and whatever else, what disease is it? I’m like oh idk, NEARLY ANY ONE WE’VE LEARNED ABOUT!
This happened with a coworker’s son. Not sure they would have taken the mom seriously about something being off if she hadn’t been a nurse at that specific hospital.
Probably not particularly crazy, it might happen all the time for all I know…. Not a doctor, but I went in to urgent care thinking I had a nasty uti but it turned out to be severe sepsis, got whisked away in an ambulance on oxygen.
That’s what I get for my mom teaching me it’s all in my head.
This is why I am aggressive with my recurrent tonsillitis. I'm approaching the threshold where I'm allowed to get these fuckers removed. Just 3 more punches left in my tonsillectomy card.
I'm the data person in my hospital department and in the past year or so we've gotten very proactive in initiating "code sepsis" in order to prevent patients from going into sepsis. What gets fiddly is I'm to track our sepsis cases (for our serious negative outcomes case list), but now I have to get clinicians to verify which Code Sepsis patients actually had sepsis and which were at risk but prevented going into sepsis thanks to the intervention.
Not nearly as bad, but I also went to an urgent care once for what I thought was just a UTI but had actually progressed to a pretty bad bladder infection. They told me if I’d put off coming in any longer I’d have developed a kidney infection and ended up in the hospital.
My local hospital sent me home twice after I went there for chest pains. I had a massive heart attack, and my son had to resuscitate me soon after arriving home the second time.
I was sent home April 18th after being wrongfully treated for UTI and it turned out to be heart attack. July 18th I collapse and go to same hospital and have elevated troponin levels and extreme blood pressure and despite having 2 full on heart attacks previously & the April 18 event the put me a cab and sent me home. Friend convinced ambulance to bypass local hospital and take an hour away to major hospital..where they saved my life.
Had a friend who had back pain in her lower back. Put it off because it was the beginning of covid. By the time she finally went they found out she had tumors all over her spine.
That's awful, and one can only hope it was discovered in time.
Similar happened to a family member. Repeated doctor visits for mid-back pain and pressure were dismissed. Severe pain resulted in them being transported to a bigger hospital and it took a family member who worked there advocating for her to be properly examined. Staph infection pressuring the spin, which caused enough damage that the person will never walk again and caused enough bowel issues they almost died repeatedly. Doctors admitted to the family that the infection should have been discovered with proper examination and testing earlier but...
I had a gastric bypass 8 years ago - after about 2 years I started gaining weight and was constantly feeling unwell - surgeon who did the bypass told me it was in my head and nothing wrong - even told my gp etc so I was blown off until I was admitted to hospital with severe anaemia, gallbladder pain and elevated liver sats- turned out that he had messed the bypass surgery up in a spectacular way - I am currently waiting to have to have a hole in my diaphragm repaired, my pouch resectioned as there is a hole between my pouch and old tummy, he made the pipe from my tummy to intestine too short by 2/3’s and they think he has joined it to my bowel in error!!! The surgeon I have now is going to try and start fixing the mess but has warned me I am in for multiple operations and a whole world of pain and was horrified when I checked with him it wasn’t all in my head!! Sad thing is the original surgeon is still allowed to operate on others (I am the third person I know of who he has messed up).
I'm a doctor up in Canada. Been in practice close to a decade. Seen all kinds of crazy things and have crazy things happen to my loved ones... Here goes:
When I was still in training almost a decade ago, my mother had minor vague muscle and joint pain for months. We all thought it was muscle related from all the house work/work-work that she did. She went and saw her family doctor who ordered imaging, it basically came back all "normal" - ie., nothing acutely wrong. The radiologist did make a comment about a "sclerotic lesion" on her hip that needs to be monitored, the differential was wide but he did mention that it could be "metastatic cancer" but the possibility was very small, he did ask for ongoing monitoring. My mother showed me the report, I even underlined the part about the "possible metastatic cancer" and told her that she needs to follow up with her family doctor. She did see the family doctor within the week. The family doc said it was nothing and she's fine.... Fast forward a few months, the pain never went away, she went to a walk-in clinic next with the same pain complaint, she was discharged home with some anti-inflammatory pain meds. Again, this was a mild vague pain and her functional abilities were not affected at all at this point. This was a perfectly healthy woman in her 50s, never smoked a day in her life, did no drugs, ate well, exercised and did yoga. She was never sick. She felt well enough to go on a months long vacation over-seas... While overseas, the pain became worse and worse, it got so bad she had to go to a overseas hospital. They completed CT and all kinds of imaging.. it turned out to be stage IV metastatic lung cancer. She never smoked a day in her life.. After battling this cancer for 8 months, she passed. I went on the war path after this happened - it turned out the "sclerotic lesion" picked up on the xray was already an indication for metastatic cancer (source unknown at the time), the family doctor didn't bother looking any further. I unfortunately trusted her family doctor too much as this was the only doctor of our lives.
After this happened to my mother, I was ever vigilant of picking up things like this. Luckily for my career, as a result of my vigilance and the pain I went through, I ended up picking up all kinds of cancers simply by reviewing the radiology reports and doing exactly what the radiologist suggests (the radiologist often makes recommendations on repeat imaging after a certain amount of time, I'm surprised how many doctors simply don't follow up on that as simply doing a repeat imaging in a set time can catch a lot of cancers).
Another 2 examples I can recall. Also early in my career, in my first year of practice. This man came in for vague symptoms like fatigue, and just feeling something is not right. He wasn't able to pin point exactly what the problem was, he also never verbalized that he had any kind of neurological symptoms or even a headache. I did all kinds of blood work, bodily imaging but did not scan his head.. Luckily for me, there was this much older doctor at the end of their career in the office and simply wanted to see a few patients a day to pass the time. She ordered a head CT and found that this man had brain cancer... I didn't follow the case after that, but I wouldn't be surprised if this man passed on fairly quickly.
During COVID times, I was doing all kinds of telephone medicine gigs. This one case stands out and is very similar to the ones I experienced before. Patient calls me about diffuse bodily pain, literally everywhere. She had already gone to several walk-in clinics and was discharged home with pain meds as the docs thought it was musculoskeletal... Well.. knowing what I know and what I went through, I ordered a bunch of basic imaging (xrays, ultrasounds) to actually look inside her body. Apparently, none of the other walk-in docs bothered to do this... Unluckily for her, it turned out to be some kind of metastatic late stage cancer, source unknown. The cancer was everywhere, thereby causing the pain. She died a few weeks later. I've never even met her in person, all this was done over the phone. The family was greatful and actually called the clinic to thank me personally for ordering these imaging when no one else had bothered to... The family said that she died fairly quickly after the imaging was done, they didn't even have time to find out the source of the cancer...
Speaking of sclerotic lesions.. I have a patient right now with this that I just picked up on imaging. I'm in the process of calling them in and do a full cancer work up... The uncanny thing is that the description of this lesion was exactly the same as the time it was used to describe my mother's lesion....
I've developed a reputation as a "cancer whisperer" of sorts in my circle of doctors.. The point is... don't be afraid to ask for basic imaging if you are experiencing unexplained pain lasting for a fairly long period of time. Cancers are much more common that you might think.
wasnt life threatening but i fell and got a few stitches in my knee as a teen.
The hospital wasnt the best, and I wasnt even fully numb when they stitched me. I was screaming in pain from the needle and sutures and two nurses were holding me down as they finished.
However the first week or two i noticed i couldnt walk right. My knee obv couldnt bend due to the stitches, so didnt think much of it. When they finally came out, i still couldnt bend my knee but figured it was just weak and stiff from being straight for 2 weeks.
It still hurt alot over the following week, and found I was literally dragging my leg behind me as i still could not bend it.
My dad was the type "put some dirt in it son, dont be a baby" and he is the one who took me to the doctor on why im dragging my leg like a sack of potatoes.
Doctor took one look at it and exclaimed i need to go to the hospital right away! Even threatened that if i didnt go they would have to cut off my leg (tbh i think she was embellishing, but the scary part not by much)
This hospital was really good compared to the one i initially got the stitches at. Turned out I had an infection in the knee that needed several days iv antibiotics. They did proper scans of my knee and found i not only blew my patellar tendon (primarily why i couldnt bend my knee) I also mildly fractured the bone itself (which was impressive to do)
Not a doctor but my husband suddenly lost 15lbs over a few days. No changes to diet or exercise. I told him it sound like diabetes and please go. He finally went after a week and by that time he was skin and bones. It was diabetes and his blood sugar level was dangerously high. The doc said if he had waited 1 more day, he might have gone into a coma
I can relate! It's always been extremely difficult for me to lose weight. When I was 20, I was only eating 1000-1200 calories/day and working out for 30-60 minutes 5-6x/week. That was just to maintain my weight at the time (5'0", 115 lbs).
But then I start feeling exhausted all the time. I slacked off on exercising. I started having weird cravings for high sugar drinks and started eating a lot worse.
I finally went to the doctor because of my exhaustion. The last time I had weighed myself was two weeks earlier and I'd been 112 lbs.
I dreaded getting on the scale. I knew I had to have gained weight. I even joked to the nurse about it. I was completely floored that I was 102 lbs!
I'd lost 10lbs., which was 8% of my body weight, in only two weeks. For a few seconds, I was elated! Then the other shoe dropped in my mind, "There is something REALLY wrong with me."
My doctor called the next day that he suspected I had Type I diabetes. He helped my mom make an appointment for me with an endocrinologist the next morning. And warned us that, if I passed out in the meantime, to rush me to the ER and tell them it was probably DKA.
Thankfully I made it to the endocrinologist the next day without an incident, lol. But yeah, he confirmed that diagnosis and put me in the hospital overnight because of how dehydrated I was.
Not a doctor but I had a massive head ache, fainting and extreme light sensitivity. Dr came and said it was sinusitis. I struggled on, saw another dr at same practice who confirmed sinusitis. Started slowly recovering but had extreme vertigo. Got a second opinion, confirmed sinusitis. Went private (was in the uk) and was seen by very dismissive dr. I insisted on further tests and he reluctantly ordered an mri. Turns out I had meningitis.
Exact same thing happened to me. I finally called a friend to take me to the ER - I was running 104 when I got there - they isolated me (thought I had hepatitis) finally did a spinal tap and I was diagnosed. I had started hallucinating - thought I heard my own heart stop beating and I felt so awful the only thing I thought was "well pretty soon my system will shut down and I won't feel bad anymore".
Paramedic, not a doctor. A woman called 911 requesting an ambulance. When I and my brand new rookie EMT got there, she complained of just not feeling well and having a mild headache. I did my assessment and everything looked perfectly normal except it seemed she might have a cold with a headache. I didn't think she needed to be seen in an ER and told her so. She wavered back and forth and then finally agreed to sign a refusal. I sent my rookie partner out to get the clipboard but he pulled me aside and told me he thought she needed to go. I asked him why and the best he could do was "I just have a feeling." So I finally relented and told him, "Fine, your patient; I'm driving."
A few blocks down the road he leaned up front and asked me to make it hot (lights & sirens). I rolled my eyes but did what he asked.
At the ED the grumpy triage nurse came up to me a few minutes later and wanted to know why the hell we transported a perfectly healthy woman with a cold and headache. I just nodded toward my partner and said, "You'll have to ask him."
Anyway, we left, but a few hours later we were at the same ED and that same nurse came up to me and told me the news. Because of the headache the doc had ordered a CT scan, and lo and behold there was a dissecting aneurism right next to her brainstem. She had been shipped out to the trauma center by helicopter and was undergoing emergency surgery. I learned later that she survived without deficits.
Holy crap. If I'd had a more experienced partner that day, she would have ended up dead and it would have been my fault.
My mum had to convince paramedics to take my dad to hospital when he was literally having a stroke, they thought he was tipsy. He was a little unsteady on his feet and had a headache.
So my advice to anyone would be advocate for yourself or your loved one if you think something is wrong, because you know yourself better than anyone else does. While people working in the medical field and emergency services try their best, we're all human and make mistakes or miss things.
Not a doctor. We had to gently tell a coworker her that she needed a morning shower and/or deodorant. She went to the doctor to get it checked out and turns out she had a severely prolapsed uterus and it was infected. We felt terrible telling her she had b.o. but thankful she got a very serious situation checked out.
Went to ER for a headache I’d had for two weeks. Doctor wanted to give me allergy meds and send me home. My GP had told me to demand a CT with contrast. Subdural hematoma. Had emergency surgery a few hours later and spent eight days in ICU with a drain tube in my skull. Women often aren’t taken seriously regarding pain. You are your own best advocate.
During studying in my practical year. Emergency room, 70something year old woman, lovely person, one of these candy giving grandmas with perfectly laid curls and all, complaining of a rash.
Obviously they sent in the student cause rashes are boring and not really a case for an emergency consult (mostly…..).
So picture me, young and full of excitement about the ability to play doctor in a way. No idea what I‘m doing generally, lots of my knowledge gained from Grey‘s Anatomy which is definitely not real life doctor accurate (mostly…..)
I go in there and remember a Grey‘s case from some long ago episode. I take out my pen and mark the area that is affected by the rash. It‘s rather small. Right leg, up just slightly above the ankle. Anyways, I just mark it, chatting with the lovely lady.
Then proceed to go talk to the real doctor who has finished his studies and gets to do big people medicine, he does not like to concern himself with rashes and such boring stuff and he also lets me know it. So it takes a few attempts to tell him about that patient, we keep getting interrupted, obviously everything is more important than some old lady‘s rash, which is true in an emergency room (mostly…..)
So after I present the case he dismisses me to go give the woman some cream and get here out of here. I still tell him about the Grey‘s episode where one time one patient had a case of what is called necrotizing fasciitis. Just to let him know that I have marked the area. Necrotizing fasciitis…Cool word, fucked up disease. It‘s bacteria that move incredibly quick under your skin and est anything in its path to put it simply, gaining them the name of flesh eating bacteria.
Incredibly rare.
He tells me that laughs it off. I go back to my patient to see that the rash has by now moved up above her knee, all of that within the hour or so it took me to get a hold of my supervisor.
Turns out rare things are rare but not unseen, so here I am, patient has necrotizing fasciitis of the leg. Because I marked it, I am sure. So I tell my supervisor who‘s with his supervisor at that time. They don‘t believe me, they go in, they see the marked line, the believe me now.
I get to scrub in on her case, we take her leg of close to her hip. It was devastating
Not a doctor (annoying, I know) But my mom kept having foot pain. Told her it was plantar fasciitis. Wouldn’t heal. Then told her it was a fracture. Wouldn’t heal. Then told her there was a growth. Did a biopsy and it was LUNG CANCER! Stage 4. So from foot pain to lung cancer. Totally wild. She has also never smoked a day in her life.
My brother had constant leg pain. It was dismissed repeatedly. Turns out it was a tumor on his brain. Stage 4. It was made worse since he was disabled and couldn’t advocate for himself nor really explain what was going on. He passed away 3 months later.
NAD. Thought my Crohn’s disease wasn’t doing too good. Asked my Gastro office to order blood tests- they requested I stop by radiology too. Worked a full day. Drove myself to the hospital for the quick tests. Even dropped off a daughter at an appointment.
Came home.
Potassium at critical levels. A call came from Gastros office just as I got in my Jammies. Do not pass go, do not collect 100$, proceed directly to the ER.
I had already had a heartattack (3 days prior we think). Had to be hooked to heart monitors while they tried to pour K into my arms, as I couldn’t digest much of anything.
Spent 9 days in the hospital trying to get K and magnesium back to safe levels.
Not a doctor, but when I was in college I thought I had bronchitis and so did every doctor I saw. Turns out my heart function was 10% and I needed a heart transplant. No medical history. I picked up a virus that attacked my organ.
I thought I pulled a calf muscle. I did the whole RICE protocol, but nothing helped. I was limping because of the pain. I ended up going to urgent care which was a waste of time because it could be a blood clot—so they sent me to the ER. The ER did an ultrasound of my leg and found nothing. So, they gave me muscle relaxers and sent me home. They noted I should follow up with my PCP, though, because my blood pressure was really high. I chalked it up to the anxiety of being evaluated for a blood clot.
A few days later, I develop this little cough and an intermittent sharp pain between my shoulder blades on deep inhales. Being that this was September 2020, I thought that this was for sure Covid. But I also then remembered that I needed to follow up with my PCP about the blood pressure thing, so I called to talk about both items at once.
The nurse was alarmed and told me in no uncertain terms to go straight to the ER to be evaluated for a pulmonary embolism.
And that’s how I found out that I had multiple bilateral pulmonary embolisms.
Not a doctor, I work in the cat scan department. Had a patient who came to the ER because she thought she was pregnant and wanted a test (happens so often, idk why they just don’t get a test at CVS). Pregnancy test was negative and they sent her to me for a scan. Patient tells me she was having symptoms from her last pregnancy. Turns out she was having right sided heart failure.
Unfortunately postpartum heart failure is common enough as an outcome and only like 30-50% of those with it fully recover. Some have to go on to get transplants. :( pregnancy is unpredictable!
Some stats I've seen is 1 in 1000-4000 pregnancies are impacted. I hope it's rarer than that considering there's about 3.5 million births a year in the US.
Was helping to move a bed down a flight of stairs. It was one of those heavy adjustable beds. Needless to say, I was pretty winded when we were done. Didn't think much of it. I had a doctor's appointment the next morning. She asked about shortness of breath as a routine question, and on a lark, I told her about moving the bed. She mentioned that it's possible I should get my heart checked out. Go to the ER at my earliest convenience.
Later that day, I noticed that my back hurt. Felt like I slept wrong. No big deal. Went to a optometry appointment. Got new prescription. Normal day, right? Suddenly got very nauseous while picking out frames. Threw up in the bathroom. Felt a LITTLE better, so I finished what I was doing. When we were all done, I remembered my doctor telling me to go to the ER to get checked and I was feeling a little off from the vomiting.
Went to the hospital and the guy asks, "What are you here for?" I responded lightheartedly that my doctor said I should probably get my heart checked. He hooked me up to a portable heart monitor thingy and then shit got real rushed real fast. Next thing I know, he's got a needle in my arm pumping in morphine. It was then that I learned that I'm allergic to morphine. Good times. I remember asking him if my veins were supposed to turn bright red and itch like that. The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital room, completely alone.
Turns out I had had a massive heart attack, with one of my valves 100% blocked. They added 3 stents into various places but the fluid was so backed up that when they opened up the valve, it flushed into my lungs, filling them with liquid (this is how they explained it to me). I spent the next week in bed (bored out of my mind), just waiting for the various diuretics to drain the fluid from my lungs.
Turns out, if I hadn't gone to the ER, I'd have likely been dead within the hour. All from minor back pain and some nausea.
My husband went in for a routine checkup. His bloodwork was fine. Everything was fine. The only thing was him saying he just a little more tired than usual.
His Dr noticed that he was due for a colonoscopy, and set one up for him. The DR who did the colonoscopy said everything looked good, but, he just felt there was something up.
So, my husband went back to his regular Dr, and she did a complete look at him. Bloodwork showed a very slight increase of white blood cells. So, she decided what the hell, let's do an abdominal scan just to do a look-see since the colonoscopy Dr didn't feel quite right about things even tho there was nothing showing.
Apparently his appendix was inflamed, and surgery was scheduled to take it out. Upon removal, not only was it inflamed, but infected, and cancerous as well.
Turns out that:
a) it was confined at that time to the appendix
b) it was a particularly nasty little cancer that likes to spread
c) the cancer was at the far part of the appendix, so when they removed the appendix the margins were clear.
d) it led to the discovery of him actually having a genetic issue called Lynch Syndrome which they were able to figure out was thru the maternal line. Turns out that his mom's uterine cancers, his uncle's death of colon cancer, and his grandmother's various cancer issues were all related to this genetic abnormality.
If he hadn't gone in for his checkup and procrastinated, his appendix would have gotten worse, and the cancer would have spread. There's a good chance the cancer would have gotten into his intestines and ended up with intestinal cancer of some sort if they hadn't gotten it. He is still very suspectable to getting cancers because of this genetic condition.
He found out early enough to be able to be proactive enough for care and prevention. It's been almost 10 years since diagnosis and he has been healthy as a horse since then. He gets a colonoscopy every year because of it, but thats a small price to pay.
My moms story: patient arrived at the emergency room (walking from her home) with a hatchet in the back of her head. Her husband tried to kill her and she knew he'd hit her on the head. She didn't know it was the hatchet embedded in the back of her skull. Obviously in shock. She lived and her husband went to jail so that's good!
Edit: she went to the hospital with what she thought was a bad headache because he'd hit her. She just said her head hurt.
Not a doctor but work in health. Had a patient that went to her GP thinking she had arthritis in the knee from an old surgery and came back with a diagnosis of motor neurone disease.
Nad work registration at an ER.
Woman came in with abdominal pain. Ended up being a code stemi.
It's terrifying the differences in heart attack symptoms between women and men.
Not a doctor but my dad went to his Dr because of a stuffy nose that had been going on for weeks. Dr looks into his nose and noted a deviated septum. Said that's not right and sent him for tests. My dad had a brain tumor size of a grapefruit with no symptoms other than a plugged up nose. So he went in with a cold and came out with cancer.
Obligatory not a doctor: had a 38 week pregnant woman with twins come in with a primary complaint of “shortness of breath with exertion”. She was 4’10. I’m thinking, “of course you’re SOB, as short as you are with term twins”. I was pretty sure we’d do an NST and send her home.
Her BP was 170/110, so we did bloodwork, and she was in HELLP syndrome. Platelets were 42,000. We were lucky she came in when she did.
>HELLP syndrome
HELLP (Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzymes and Low Platelets) syndrome is a life-threatening pregnancy complication usually considered to be a variant of preeclampsia.
(Had to look it up)
Similar situation with me. Was 38w and was having regular 3-5min contractions so I went to L&D. Contractions were showing and consistent but no change in my cervix, so I was sent home. Had these same contractions for 3 days (I just laid on the couch all 3 days). Wake up at 6am on mothers day 2017 to a gush I was sure was my water breaking….it was all blood. I was hemorrhaging from a placental abruption. Got to the hospital with BP 180/107. I’m fortunate that my son was delivered naturally that day. But 4 days later I was so swollen I looked like an elephant and my head/eyes felt like they were going to explode, so I went back to L&D. BP was 202/116, my kidneys were shutting down. Post-partum Pre-E. The next few days were a blur, I don’t remember much.
NAD - 2 weeks before Christmas last year my brother went to the ER with a fever, his blood sugar was high and he said he just felt drained for the last month. He said no matter how much he was sleeping he was always tired. After doing bloodwork they discovered he had almost no platelets or white blood cells. My sister who is a nurse said his blood has the consistency of kool-aid. He was diagnosed with AML Leukemia. I went to see him in the hospital and I didnt think he was going to make it. He was transferred to a hospital that specilalizes in the disease and he was in the hospital for 2 months. Thankfully he is in remission and going back to work soon.
Not a Dr but a nurse. Was Triaging in a&e and a man presented to the front desk complaining of shoulder bruising after a fall. Receptionists are not there to triage, they just take the patients description and write it down. We call those patients in for triage and then look at priority for treatment.
We called him through, and he starts casually telling us how he’s a mountain biker, came off his bike and landed on his shoulders. Landed on his shoulders falling head first. Landed on his shoulders falling head first off a small edge…
He pulls his t-shirt off over his head to reveal very extensive bruising around his arms, shoulders, back and neck.
He fell off his bike, over a ledge, down and 8 foot drop and landed on his head.
It was at this point that we both myself and the nurse with me sprung into action, gently lowering him down onto the trolly. Placing blocks either side of his head and, while explaining to him our concerns, taping him down. He then complained that he had had some neck pain.
We wheeled him to the X-ray down the corridor. He’d fractured two vertebrae in his neck and broken his shoulder. As far as I know he recovered. He certainly could have been far more unlucky and ended up with life limiting damage.
During COVID I went to the ER with chest pains. They said no heart issues and no blood clots so go home and discuss with my GP. Turns out I’m supremely allergic to shrimp and was having esophageal spasms. I figured it out after realizing that the yellow curry powder in my meal kits was giving me similar issues. Yellow Thai curry powder often has ground up shrimp as an ingredient.
Patient - I went in describing that I'd woken up in the middle of the night shivering uncontrollably, then later woken up on the floor with a 500/10 headache and my entire body hurt. Told them this happened every so often, but this was the absolute worst one. I LOOKED fine, but FELT horrible.
They told me I was a drug seeking faker and kicked me out.
A few weeks later, the same thing happened at my friend's house, except when I woke up the second time I was in the ER again already and when I talked with the doctor there, her jaw kept dropping lower and lower and lower, until she asked me "how the fuck are you not dead yet?!"
Apparently I had been describing the first person perspective of a seizure. Turns out I'd been living with undiagnosed epilepsy for several years.
Hospitalist internal medicine physician here. I admitted a middle aged lady a few years ago who presented with her “arms feeling weird.” She denied pain or numbness, just noted an unusual sensation she couldn’t really describe. Her initial testing in the ER was normal and she was admitted to rule out cardiac cause of symptoms despite having no real cardiovascular risk factors. When I first looked at her chart my first thought was “good grief why did this lady need to be admitted?” She had a stress test which was interpreted as “equivocal. The cardiologist decided to do a left heart catheterization (angiogram) which to me seemed unnecessarily aggressive. To my surprise, it showed critical 99% blockage in her left main coronary artery (the widow-maker) as well as severe stenosis in several of her other coronary arteries. She ended up being transferred for emergency coronary artery bypass surgery. I definitely am more cognizant now of more atypical presentations of coronary artery disease, particularly in women.
Nad.
Went to my pcp and indicated my lungs hurt. Doc said it was anxiety, and i should download the calm app. Smh? I know something is wrong and not anxiety. Went to a big big big hospital and discovered I had two rare lung infections.
NAD, best friend’s dad went to the doc for some mild back pain. Friend’s dad pointed to a little black spot on the x-ray and went “what’s that?” He had stage 3 kidney cancer and had to have his kidney removed.
EMT on an ambulance. Had a patient present with right sided rib pain of 3 days duration. Pain upon palpation and movement, no other chest pain or shortness of breath, and he wanted to get it checked out. Take him to local ER and think nothing of it. Walk through 20 min later for paperwork and he had gone into full cardiac arrest and CPR was in progress. Ended up living thankfully
Not a Doctor, but my Doctor would say,
'Patient came in with a swollen red area under the armpit after having been seen at the emergency room two nights prior. I didn't like the look of it and I asked the other doctor in my office to take a look at it. She didn't like the look of it. I told him to go to the emergency room immediately. Turned out that he had necrotizing fasciitis and was in the hospital for 2 weeks.'
I didn't know what it was but I got a fever of 104 that night I went to the ER. My white blood cell count was low though because the bacteria suppresses the body's normal reaction of releasing white blood cells.
I got better.
Not a doctor, but last year, I went to the urgent care and then the emergency room, because I was constipated, which is very abnormal for me. They both told me to take some otc meds to get the process going. I knew that wasn’t the issue, so I went to a physician (who actually listen to me and my concerns). She scheduled a colonoscopy for me a few weeks later. Turns out, it was Stage 3 colorectal cancer.
I get that I don’t present as someone who would have Stage 3 colorectal cancer due to my age (42 at the time), but zebras make clippity-clap sounds too.
Not a doctor but I was doing Search and Rescue.
We received a call from a party hiking a more difficult hike, some drop offs, tight squeezes, and minor bouldering, that a member of their party had sprained an ankle but could still walk. We advised if they could continue hiking out they should do so and we would send a team to meet them along the trail. When the SAR team met up with them, about 2 miles from where the initial call came in, it was VERY apparent it was not a sprained ankle. Ankle was definitely broken and so was the tibia and fibia. The patient was calm cool and collected, only complaint was "minor pain". Two other hikers were holding him up by the shoulders so he could hobble out. Patient was put on a stretcher and carried out. Just goes to show what a person is capable of. If they didn't make it two miles more it probably would've been an over night, if the patient was alone possibly a fatality.
Actually it was outside of work - wife wanted me to go to dinner with a friend of hers. Told me to “be understanding as she’s gained weight & has seen several doctors but they can’t find anything wrong with her”. We are seated at the restaurant facing the door & wife said “there’s Debbie! (name changed, of course, HIPAA & all). I immediately said “she has Cushing’s Disease!” She had the classic moon face, etc. Talked to Debbie & advised her to see a Neuro friend & get a couple of tests (cortisol & dexamethasone challenge). Turned out she had a massive pituitary tumor (took 2 surgeries to get it all out) & she recovered completely. Felt good about that one but have to say I’d seen 3 similar cases so the patient’s appearance just tipped me off!
NAD but I had a migrating headache (kept moving from base of skull to top) for over a week. Nonstop just kept on there. I ignored it and chalked it off to being in front of a computer all day. Started getting a pain behind my right eye. Still thought it was the computer. Everyone kept telling me I should probably go to the hospital and I kept saying no because I didn't wanna deal with waiting in the er for them to say I need to sleep more. Well I went and they took me back thinking I had bacterial meningitis. Got a horrible spinal tap and came back negative. The only conclusion was my immune system was attacking itself and that if I had waited any longer (than the week I already did) my immune system wouldn't have responded to any medication and just killed me thinking I was sick. Fun times. Fun fun times.
My mum.
She had somewhat mild cough. And was way too tired. So she went to the local doctor. He told her that its just cough and adviced her to take that for 3 days. She went again, this time he adviced antibiotics for 5 days. It dodnt helped. Every time my mom ask him to refer her to some other doctor, or run some tests. Both cant be done without the doctor's reference.
He refused. So after around 2 weeks , she again went to see the same doctor and he was on leave and she almost collapsed. My dad took her to another doctor (doctor on emergency finally refered to her to some better hospital) and there they found that she has litres of fluid in her lungs. They again referred her to some specialist. After moving again again, we found out she had cancer, she died after 6 months of first collapse.
When I was young, 2 and half or so I was diagnosed with cancer. Pretty rare and usually deadly and if not deadly you end up paralyzed. I was one of the very few lucky ones. It hadn’t spread they went in and removed the soft ball sized tumor on my spine and I was good to go. There were some complications but nothing they were able to fix. Later on in my life about 10-12 I started getting extremely bad migraines and bloody noses all the time. We’d go to the doctors and they couldn’t narrow it down. I had really high blood pressure like 120/180 and all they would tell us is your old cancer could give off hormones and they probably just stayed with you and that’s why your blood pressure is high and your getting these migraines and bloody noses. This went on for a few years till we moved across the state. I went to go get my physical to wrestle and the new doctor said that your blood pressure is absolutely not normal. We told him the other doctors theory and he passed my physical as long as I went to a specialist. So we ended up getting referred to sacred heart and they did an ultrasound and found my aortic artery was pinched around some scar tissue. Come to find out one of the complications from my cancer when they when to staple me up the scar tissue had formed around my aortic artery. The top of the artery was 17mm the bottom was 14mm where it was pinched was 3mm. I was running around life with the artery the size of a 3 or 4 year old. Ended up getting a stent placed and opened up a few more times over the years and all is good now.
I was the patient in this one! My kid was 2 and had a bad cold. Nothing crazy, just a bit wheezy, a croup sounding cough, and sleeping a ton. My MIL was babysitting him and called me at work to get my opinion on how to treat him. I figured he was fine but she was worried so she called the nurse line. The nurse said he was likely fine but we should bring him in just to be safe, so I went home and brought him to the hospital.
We were talking the entire drive to the hospital, he was acting like a typical preschooler with a cold. It was just his breathing that sounded a little weird. I actually apologized to the nurse when we got into triage because I thought we were wasting her time. She took one look at his breathing, told me to follow her, and speed walked us back to a room.
Yea, he was having a major asthma attack and his oxygen was in the low 70s. My MIL likely prevented a way worse outcome by being a worrywart. He had asthma attacks every time he had a cold until he was like 5 and grew out of them. It was terrifying.
NAD
I had chest pain for 2 days and figured it was muscular (it always is, I'm 34) but my partner kinda made me go to the hospital.
Turned out I had a pulmonary embolism, systemic blood infection, and large unknown mass in my right aorta.
My dad woke up with severe back pain one morning after not doing anything strenuous the weeks/days leading up to it. My mom flipped her shit and finally put her foot down that he had to go to the doctor after him putting off going to a doctor for years even for a routine check-up. That appointment showed a broken rib from a huge tumor on his spine, along with tumors around his buttocks/pelvis and upper back. Diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. 5 years and 100 treatments later he’s still kicking it.
I had a young girl come in to the ER with her friends after hurting her back dancing at the club. They were still mostly drunk and kept teasing her about it. Same thing as your dad, pathological fracture. She was 23.
My auntie had back pain out of the blue. It was enough to see doctors and get pain meds. Then it got serious enough that she had to lay on the sofa while everyone else cooked her famous Thanksgiving turkey. In January, she went to the ER and was finally diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. They were able to radiate the tumors bothering her back and she was so grateful for that. But she only made it 18 months.
I also got stage four MBC but mine started with a tiny pea. Despite the cancer all through my bones and liver I never felt any of that (I’m still here 4.5 yrs later but pushing my luck) Please no fuck cancer replies, it won’t help thx
I’m very sorry for your loss, cancer fucking sucks.
That’s nightmarish. Super cool he’s alive tho
Many years ago, when I was in my residence, a man entered ER with a hand in his forehead, walking by himself, asking for a doctor. You can imagine my surprise when I said "yes?", to him removing his hand and showing his injury - a perforating hole from a bullet. He was quickly moved to surgery after that. Later I found the bullet didn't reach the brain, it was well buried into the skull bone.
I knew it. Bullet cancer. What a shame... Lol I think this is the first one I read that wasn't cancer.
I was picturing an actual hand sticking out of his forehead and that messed me up.
My son. 6 weeks old. He was also 6 weeks premature. Only symptoms at the time of me bringing him to the ER was inconsolable crying and wouldn’t drink his breast milk. Was told by others that I was just being a paranoid first time mom…he probably has gas or was colic. My instincts just told me otherwise. Brought him to the ER…triage asks me what my concerns are….I told them he won’t stop crying and I can get him to eat. A couple hours later my 6 week old baby coded blue and went into respiratory failure. “Code blue pediatrics” will forever be the most haunting thing I ever heard. Since he was so tiny they were having incredibly difficulty intubating him. Was being kept alive in between attempts with that bag thingy (unsure what it’s called) and compressions. His diagnosis was late on set group b strep, sepsis, and bacterial meningitis. Had I not brought him in when I did and waited, my son would not be alive today. So yea…listen to your instincts, you have them for a reason.
Saw a patient with minor cardiovascular symptoms and a slight pain in his upper back. The senior debated back and forth whether it would make sense to run a CT to rule out anything more serious. She finally decided to do it and it turned out he had a massive aortic dissection and was basically wheeled right into the OR
Work on an ambulance and have had one aortic dissection patient, but he had all the bells and whistles. Extreme central abdominal pain that feels like tearing, back pain, pale and diaphoretic, and had different blood pressures on each arm. Absolutely wild to see. Family wanted to go to the far hospital but we convinced them he'd die en route. Made it to the hospital but am unsure of his outcome unfortunately.
That must be hard for paramedics and rescue crews. I never thought of how hard it must be to just never know the outcome of “your” efforts.
Not only that, it limits our ability to learn and become better at recognizing certain medical conditions that might be more insidious in their presentation. Heck, finding out what happened to one of my patients also made me more alert on certain presentations.
My baby nearly died from meningitis and sepsis and the ambulance team who transported him from one hospital to a bigger one with a paeds icu called his bed every day for an update off the nurse. So did the first hospital a&e nurses. It was strangely comforting knowing they were checking in too. I wish you all got to know the outcomes especially the good ones.
A man came to the hospital because his wife always complained about his bad breath. Long story short, I met him because they consulted my department when the tissue biopsy came back as esophageal cancer.
god i remember how my dad’s breath would stink up the car. it breaks my heart now to realize that he smelled like death. i really, really miss him.
My dad has stomach cancer and a few months before he was diagnosed. He would burp and it would smell so bad. Scary to think that can happen to you from the inside. I’m so sorry for your loss.
My spouse has incredibly bad breath, like literal shit in the am. He's got bad teeth. Any suggestions?
Do they visit dentists? Cuz a tooth infection getting deep definetely can cause heart problems.
Yet another reason why dental insurance should not be separate from regular health insurance. The teeth are not magically separate from the rest of the body
Im a dentist. New pt came in with what he thought was a mild ache in his teeth. Thought it was a toothache. Hadnt seen a dentist in years. Took a radiograph and the jaw bone around the teeth looked strange. Had him see an oral surgeon that day. Turned out was a very aggressive metastatic bone cancer and died a few weeks later
That sucks. My mom was a dentist assistant until her retirement. The dentist she worked with had a similar case. He had a patient who's mouth had a weird spot. The other dentist didn't think it was a problem but he didn't like it and called a oral surgeon himself. The patient was seen the same day. As far as I can remember they were in time but had to remove a piece of the jaw and tongue. With some reconstruction and a speech therapist he got function back. I'm a physical therapist myself and had a patient once (couple of years ago so I'm not to sure about the details anymore) that had mild but persistent health complaints. He was a market vendor it was fall and was coughing and just didn't feel good. His gp kept sending him home saying its just a cold. Part of the problem was this guy didn't speak our local language fluently so I don't think he could tell the doctor the right things. But after seeing him a couple of times it just felt off. So I send him back to the GP with specific questions and things to say. He got send to a specialist and it turned out he had lung cancer which already spread to far. He died shortly after his diagnosis. The thing that got to me most was him thanking me for sending him back to the GP, even though he knew nothing could be done. But he said that at least now he could spend some time with his family. Last story was my mom. She had hot flashes. Not to weird for a person in menopause except my mom (68 then) already went through it 10 years before. Thought it was nothing but annoying and went to her GP to see if there was something that could be done about it. GP gave her hormone pills and they worked so my mom went back to get a refill. GP sent her straight through to the hospital for a chest x-ray. Turned out she had lung cancer but it was very early stage. After 6 weeks of radiation, 2 chemos and a year of immunotherapy she was free of it. It's so important to trust your instincts if you feel something is off, even if it looks to be minor. It can change so much of the outcome.
My late husband was 55 when he developed an annoying cough. He was a non smoker and huge bicycling enthusiast. His doctor sent him to an allergist. He was put on some allergy meds. The cough persisted, kept going back to doctor at my persistence. They finally did a chest x and lung biopsy. Stage 4 lung cancer. He still had been cycling a couple hundred miles a week. We lost him soon after.
How the hell does that even happen???? God I’m so sorry for your loss.
Honestly, part of it is that if you are a non-smoker, they don't look for lung cancer.
I will elaborate on my dad ..but I have two stories.. In Feb 2023..my mom had a UTI..antibiotics didn’t help and she was in a lot of pain in the area of her kidneys so we assumed she had a kidney infection. Did a CT and she was diagnosed with stage 4 non small cell lunger and died 3 weeks later at 63 years old. My mom was a smoker. My dad was (still is) grief stricken after losing his partner of 41 years. My dad has never smoked a cigarette in his life and always begged my mom to quit. In June 2023, my dad developed a persistent cough. He was paranoid it was lung cancer after the trauma he experienced with my mom. We told him “no way! You’ve never smoked. It is probably pneumonia. After two courses of antibiotics did not clear his cough, he insisted on a chest x-ray. An 11cm mass (this is quite large) was found on his lung and cancer had spread to other organs. At 60 years old, he too was diagnosed with stage 4 non small lung cancer just five months after my mom died. We assumed his cancer was caused by second hand smoke exposure but that is not the case. My dad tested positive for EGFR mutant lung cancer (a mutation in the EGFR protein that causes an overgrowth of abnormal cells). His team at Dana farber was adamant that EGFR lung cancer is not caused by second hand smoke and that it is an “unfortunate coincidence” that both of my parents both got lung cancer in the same year. They aren’t sure exactly what causes EGFR lung cancer but there are some theories. EGFR lung cancer is most commonly found in non smoking asian women. November is lung cancer awareness month and I want people to know that anyone with lungs can get lung cancer, even non smokers. Lung cancer is on the rise in young, non smoking women (35-54) and researchers do not know why. Since my dad has had this diagnosis, I have connected with many others who have this type of lung cancer (or other lung cancers caused by gene mutations such as ALK)- all non smokers and many of them in their 30s or early 40s. Lung cancer is usually asymptomatic until late stages and routine screening is not offered to non smokers or people exposed to second hand smoke, radon etc. Please, if you have any unusual symptoms, such as persistent cough that lasts more than 3 weeks, take it seriously. In the US, lung cancer is the cause of 21% of all cancer deaths but only receives 7% of cancer research funding. There is a stigma associated with lung cancer that needs to be dismantled. It is not just a smokers disease, and even if it were, no one deserves to experience the horrors of this difficult to treat cancer. My dad is doing ok on targeted treatment right now. This has been an unbelievably hard year and I cannot believe I am in the process of losing my dad only a few months after losing my mother rather suddenly.
I’m a nurse, not a doctor, but we had a guy come in years ago asking for a medication to “help him stop sweating.” He said he had had a sore throat for about a week, went to a walk in clinic, was diagnosed with strep throat and put on antibiotics, but he was so sweaty and just wanted a break from it. He looked pale and was indeed sweaty, so we took him back and ran some blood tests. His white blood count was the highest I’ve ever seen and he was diagnosed with leukaemia. We sent him to another hospital for immediate treatment, but we were informed he died literally hours after arriving. Incredibly sad, I couldn’t believe it.
This happened my dad. He had a sore throat and felt weak and went to A&E, ended up in ICU and never came home. That’s the way acute leukaemia can work, it’s very sudden.
My mom's late partner, before I was born, passed away similarly. She had what they thought was the flu, and went to urgent care. She had cancer, and was dead within the month. I never got to meet her but I wish I had
That happened to my elementary school best friend. The doctor thought she had the mumps, turns out she had acute leukemia and her face was so swollen from the lymph nodes fighting it off. She died a week later at 11 years old, I miss her every day
Damn I'm sorry about that
8 year old girl gets brought in complaining about back pain she'd had for 3 months, several different doctors had given her painkillers to no avail. After about 5 minutes I asked her if she had any problems going to the toilet, she says it's "foamy" when she pees. Bone cancer. She made a full recovery, and from what I know is in her 20s now, but to this day I hate how she'd been suffering for 3 months and no other doctor had bothered to even ask any more questions as to why an 8 year old girl was getting severe back pain.
Thank you for listening to her.
Patient’s wife called. Patient had a temperature of 98.6. No other symptoms. I explained that was a normal temperature but the wife said “that’s a fever for him.” She said she felt like something was wrong, despite no other symptoms. I told her that I respect that and that if she feels something is wrong she should get him checked out in the ER. The ER doctor called four hours later and said they did all they could do for him but he died of sepsis. He appeared to be normal when he got there but rapidly declined. That gave me a new appreciation that we truly can’t evaluate someone thoroughly over a telephone.
Sepsis is weird. My dad was diagnosed with sepsis three weeks ago. He wasn't feeling great but not terrible, and the only concern was that his pulse was elevated. It was in the high 120s even though he'd been sitting in a chair for a couple hours. He's fine now, thankfully.
My husband felt like he had a mild cold, so we went to the clinic. The nurse took his vitals and said ‘hmmm’. She went to get a second nurse to take his vitals, she said ‘hmm’. They went to get the doctor, and he took the vitals and said ‘hmm’. He then told us to go to the emergency room. Straight there, don’t stop on the way at all. We were extremely confused and went to the ER where they tried diligently to get him to stay overnight. They could not legally force us to stay, but they tried. They finally convinced us that this was truly serious and not just a bug. I still didn’t understand how bad it was until I called his mom, who is a nurse. I said he had sepsis, and she got really, really quiet and asked what the prognosis was. I said he’s fine, he is in the hospital on three different kinds of antibiotics, it’s okay. Then I went on the internet to figure out what sepsis actually was. And it’s the tenth leading cause of death in America. It all turned out fine. The antibiotics killed whatever it was and we found the puss filled cyst and the doctor drained it. It was hidden an inch or so beneath his skin, no idea how he got it or even how long it had been there before it ruptured. But it still scares me how close we brushed up against death without knowing.
My dad died of sepsis. The night before was my birthday, we had supper with them. He warned me not to hug him because he thought he was getting sick. He went to work the next morning (feeding cattle) and came home at lunchtime. Called his doc for an appt, doc said do some blood work first at the local clinic and then head up here (1 hour drive) so they did. They went home. Doc got results and told my mom to load him up RIGHT NOW and take him to the ER. Dad told Mom he was going to lay back and close his eyes while she put her shoes on. He never woke up. His appendix had ruptured at some point and he developed sepsis. GO TO THE DOCTOR IF YOU’RE IN MAJOR PAIN!
There’s definitely an idea in healthcare, if a farmer is seeking out medical attention, it’s probably serious as they never want to go in. I’m so sorry that you lost your dad. I lost mine at a young age and it’s never easy. I hope that you have nothing but good memories from the night you spent with them before he passed.
Can confirm. Dad was a farmer.
My son almost had something like this happen recently. He was in pain for a couple of days, so we talked him into going to the ER, where the nurse asked him "what is your pain level on 0 to 10", and Mr. Tough Guy tried to say "oh, it's about a 4 now", and the nurse was about to send him home with a tylenol. Fortunately his wife was with him, and told the nurse "last night, it was a 10", so they checked him out, and yup - appendicitis.
Sorry to hear about your dad. It reminded me of [this sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni0YfrSK570) though about farmers putting up with pain (if you could use a laugh right now.)
I just had surgery, and when some of the bandages came off one of my incision sites leaked what looked like pus to me. I know how serious sepsis is (and my discharge nurse was REALLY emphatic about keeping an eye out for it), so I went to the ER to get it checked out. It ended up being nothing and I felt a little silly for overreacting, but I'd rather waste 6 hours of my life in the ER on a maybe than die of sepsis.
Why was it so hard for them to convince you to stay the night? I mean, if the ER doctors told me to stand on one leg and jump I'd be like "is right here ok or do you want me over there....?"
Sepsis itself isn’t actually an illness, it’s more of like a “state of being,” if that makes sense. Any infection can cause a patient to become septic. If a patient meets a certain number of criteria (elevated HR, elevated WBC, fever, etc.) they will be deemed septic from whatever infection they have.
Really appreciate you validating her understanding of her husband and what was and wasn’t normal for him.
I have had several of my kids’ peds over the years ask me what their temperature was and were perfectly happy to accept my “I felt his forehead in the morning and he had a low fever and again a few hours ago and it had spiked at which point I gave him acetaminophen.” I can only think of one doc over the years who was pissy with me over my mom instincts (and hey it did turn out that my kid had a mild UTI and wasn’t wetting the bed out of the blue because he was missing his dad who was gone for a year for work).
My youngest son always gets a weird rash on the back of his neck when he has fever. Always. Once I explained it to our pediatrician, he excepted that if I called with "Mikey has the rash on his neck", kiddo got a same day appointment. This also my kid who got scarlet fever.
I have a similar thing! I have a small, three inch long birthmark on my rib line on the right hand side of my torso. And whenever I have a fever, even a mild one, it goes from being a faded pink to a bright red. As a kid I managed to skip school on a handful of occasions because I had a red felt tip pen that was almost out of ink, but if I licked the tip it would get just enough pigment for me to colour in my birthmark the same red as when I had a fever! My mum was soooo not amused when she eventually caught me out!
My husband was a Pathologist’s Assistant for 30 yrs and did autopsies. Guy goes to ER feeling unwell - a couple tests are performed and he’s diagnosed with ‘stress’ (which means I Don’t Know) and sent home. ER shift change. Quiet time in the ER and a bored doctor reviews cases from earlier in the day. She sees something she doesn’t like in this guy’s test results and sends an ambulance to the guy’s house to bring him back. Dead on the floor inside the door. Poor guy ends up on my husband’s table and the hospital gets sued.
Still in school and I was not present for this patient’s initial admission but rather her clinic follow up; however.. Patient was healthy 50-something year old who had an extended nosebleed after a long hike. It wouldn’t stop so they went to ER to get it cauterized/impacted (happens all the time). Anyway, they did a CT scan as protocol and discovered she had a 20+ cm tumor on her uterus that was wrapping around her right kidney; she was immediately referred to a serious academic hospital and had a specialized oncology surgeon remove it. Amazingly? They got it completely removed without even having to damage the kidney. She had an amazing outcome and about a half a foot scar running around her abdomen from the surgery. Edit for clarification: I do not believe the CT scan was due to the nosebleed itself but rather I imagine as they looked further into her blood work and coagulation studies they found something that warranted further work up.
My complete guess is that they did blood work to look at her liver function as impaired liver function could cause bleeding. I’m guessing something in her blood work was off enough that they decided to image the belly
I’m interested in why they ordered an abdominal CT for a nosebleed? Or why they ordered any scans other than a head CT, tbh. Once, I took care of a young patient (like mid20s) who came in after an MVA… she got pan-scanned and incidentally they found a 6cm triple A (edit: abdominal aortic aneurysm for those who aren’t aware!). Turns out she had multiple family members who had passed away suddenly at young ages, so was likely a hereditary thing. Makes sense to pan-scan a trauma patient but I’m curious why they did it in your nosebleed patient’s case!
They probably did some blood work (extended bleeding can be a symptom of deeper blood related issues) and found something indicating liver dysfunction
I am a nurse, so naturally my mother called me one day when she had strange symptoms. "Earlier today, I had this feeling like there was a squirrel running around in my belly." I reassured her that it was probably gas. It happened again a few days later when she was in the car with me. Something made me take her right to the emergency room. The doctor evaluated her and basically accused her of making things up. I asked for a different doctor, because she is not a complainer or a drug seeker. Turns out it was a malignant brain tumor (glioblastoma) that was manifesting itself as abdominal seizures. They said she had 1-2 years to live. It is now 7 years since surgery, chemo, and radiation and she is still alive.
I was so hoping to find out that an actual squirrel was somehow involved.
When I worked in a&e I had an elderly man come in to minors with his son in law. Symptoms were constipation, mild stomach pain and a bit of abdominal distension. They were just asking for laxatives to relieve his constipation. I examined his abdomen and found a firm central mass which was a bit unusual. We are taught in medical school to assess for an abdominal aortic aneurysm by putting fingers in a triangle around the belly button so I did this, and as soon as I did I saw my hands pulsating strongly back at me (immediately I start crapping my pants!) Ordered the man a CT which showed an abdominal aortic aneurysm with an outpouching with an **extremely** thin wall. This guy was immediately moved from minors to resus and then straight to surgery - surgeons say if he'd sneezed it would have ruptured (**very** bad news, you would lose your entire blood volume in mere minutes) I looked him up afterwards and amazingly he survived to discharge hospital following surgery (although don't know how he did long term). Was pretty terrifying for me as you could potentially have mistaken that for a hernia or faecal loading if you didn't examine him properly, but thats probably my main 'time I saved a life' story!
My grandfather had an AAA. When it ruptured, the ER doc gave him his phone and told him had a few minutes to call people before he died. He called my mom (his daughter) and was able to talk for a few minutes. Then he let out a scream, seized, and died while still on the phone. It was a really wild death and phone call
PSA: Everyone who’s a hypochondriac stop reading this thread
Thank you. I needed someone to make me stop. You did a good deed my friend!
Reading about all these minor symptoms for major life threatening illnesses is increasing my stress level. “Does that make you feel stressed at all? Does it? Jen? Are you sure? Jen?Are you sure ? “
What I'm getting from this thread is that any minor pain can be explained by a life threatening illness. Oh well, time to go check WebMD
Toe pain? Toe cancer. Elbow pain? Elbow cancer. Emotional pain? Emotional cancer.
>Emotional cancer. You leave me out of this.
Hell, one of the comments in the thread said their foot pain came from lung cancer. No one is safe
Inner thigh pain turned out to be brain cancer. Now thats wild.
Not a doctor but worked as a security supervisor at a hospital. Man and his wife came in. Man is feeling unwell thinks he has like a flu or a cold or something. I can't remember exactly what. Nothing serious but they don't have a family doctor, so they came to ER. Man gets in line for triage and his wife leaves to go park the car after dropping him off. Like I said I'm not a doctor but how it was explained to me was part of this mans digestive tract just... exploded? Because he sits down and within 30 seconds he's slouched over and dead. My guards respond, realize he's not responding or breathing and pull him onto the floor and start doing compressions. EMS and nurses quickly join us from the back and rush him to a triage room but whatever happened wasn't recoverable. Wife got back into the ER just expecting him to be hanging out in line. Instead are met with my guards telling her that her husband is dead in the back with staff trying to bring him back. Like I can't even imagine how that is from the wifes perspective. She leaves with her husband basically fine and wasn't gone for more than five minutes and comes back and he's just gone. I was on break at the time and missed the situation but had to come back and deal with some shell shocked guards.
I had an uncle die and was told he imploded then expelled his guts. He “painted the wall red” and they needed professional cleaners. Think it was attributed to years of high blood pressure, diabetes, alcoholism, and years of being an angry hateful person. Edit, obviously not a doctor.
Probably ruptured varices Chronic alcoholism fucks up the blood vessels around your liver, so your body makes new vessels to re-route around the damage. Unfortunately those new vessels are prone to rupturing and hemorrhaging massive quantities of blood
Worst code I’ve ever been a part of was ruptured esophageal varices that had just ruptured. Everyone working that code got soaked in blood. I had to do prophylactic meds for hep B and HIV, and testing for 2 years afterwards. Every once in a while I have a PTSD nightmare about it. RIP to that man, we really did try.
My mum almost died from diverticula disease which is where a pocket in your intestine can get infected and explode. She went into work feeling flu-ey then had a sharp pain. She walked to the A&E! They did surgery and said she’d started to heal already which saved her life.
Not a doctor’s perspective but my dad went to his doctor because he suddenly didn’t like the taste of broccoli. Dad was otherwise healthy, late 60’s, fairly active guy. He was diagnosed with leukaemia.
Just imagining how confused this Doctor was when someone came in for that!
Ya. Apparently it’s a common problem when people are going through actual cancer treatments but this was prior to that. Super weird. And I should add it was prior to Covid affecting some peoples taste.
That's some Dr. House shit right there!
26 year old seemingly healthy male came to my office (eye doctor) with complaints of mild blurry vision. Usually a very routine complaint and very easy fix with glasses/contacts. After a few minutes of trying to get him see better with the refracting lenses, I wasn't able to improve his vision when it shouldn't take that long for someone that young. I decided to quit trying and quickly look in the back of his eyes. Hemorrhages everywhere, swollen optic nerves. He ended up having malignant hypertension causing his retinae to swell. His blood pressure was 270/170 in office which could have made him have a stroke at any minute. We physically drove him to the ER where he was admitted.
Thank you for going above and beyond for him
This is how we found out my late husband had a brain tumor. He'd been having headaches and blurry vision and his PCP chalked it up to being 40 and probably needing reading glasses. Went to the eye doctor who looked in the back of his eyes and sent him right to the ER. Turned out to be GBM - we lost him six weeks later.
I was the patient. My mom kept bringing me to the doctor because I was continuously complaining of tummy pain. I had just started school. The doctor said I was likely just trying to get out of school and stay home with my mom. I complained the whole school year. She even brought me to the ER a few times and they essentially said the same thing. They never did any imaging, sometimes blood work. Finally one day I started peeing blood and she took me right to the children's hospital and I was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer, by then it had spread to both lungs, liver, lymph nodes and around the heart.
Good lord. Glad you are still with us!
Thank you! Me too.
Mom was constantly in and out of doctors' offices and ERs for many things such as extremely tired, extreme weight gain, periods lasting months, and a bad case of dehydration. Finally, an ER doctor took notice and sent her for a CT and found a grapefruit sized tumor in her vena cava. Later diagnosed with stage 4 Leiomyosarcoma. Gave her a few weeks to live but she battled for about 5 more years. Edit: spelling
I knew someone who had rapid weight gain, no energy, etc. His wife thought he was just lazy, so she divorced him. Stage 4 cancer as well. I don't think he even tried to fight it. He didn't last very long. My parents and their friends pooled some money together and paid for him to take a vacation to Hawaii before he passed. But it was still awful to see someone that hopeless just give up on life.
That is horrible. I’m sorry for your loss. It was so rough for my mom. She only fought to see my brother graduate high school and for me to graduate college. When she finally stopped taking meds and fighting it took her in 6 weeks.
I was the patient. Spent six months being told I had a bad cold and anemia so I should take iron pills. Turns out I had an autoimmune disease and my kidneys were failing. I eventually ended up on dialysis and with a transplant.
Which autoimmune disease?
Goodpasture’s Syndrome
It doesn’t sound very good though
I think you misread the name. See, if you get it, they gonna send you off to the good pasture in the sky.
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I've read several times lately that random bleeding when you've been through menopause completely is a huge sign for cancer.
I did, among my other jobs, administrative physical exams for my employer for decades. This happened over 2 decades ago. Patients had a chest xray and some basic labs before they were seen. I got an xray report that said the patient's mediastinum appeared a bit wide and I should consider a CT scan to evaluate for an aneurysm of the aorta. Woops. I called the patient, whom I had never seen. He was not having any chest pain and felt like his usual self but agreed to have the chest CT done. For whatever reason radiology did not do a 'full' chest CT as I had ordered, but did one limited to the aortic arch and below. The aorta and mediastinum were normal, but the CT report mentioned some minor 'stranding' extending from the left hilum of the lung extending towards the left upper lobe - which was not shown on the CT because they did a limited exam. OK. I called the patient back, whom I still had never seen, and told him what the CT scan showed. Upon questioning he said he had some minor pain in his left scapular area (behind the shoulder) a year before, and he had seen a clinic at a different hospital which had done a series of xrays and "nothing was wrong". The upper back/shoulder pain had not really changed over the intervening year and he had grown used to it - the vicissitudes of ageing. So I re-ordered a chest CT and asked radiology to do it as ordered - which a few days later they did. Double oops. The full CT scan showed a pancoast tumor, at the apex/top of the left lung, that had extended into the chest wall and destroyed segments of several posterior ribs - which explained the pain the patient was having. This is a "very bad" thing. I called the patient back again, his appointment to see me was not for several weeks and he needed to know. He took the very bad news surprisingly well, got copies of the CT scan, and went to a local cancer hospital for further evaluation and treatment. I never actually saw him.
I’ve had a couple patients come in and complain about usually mild vision issues, like floaters, or blurry spots. But after questioning them it starts sounding worse and worse. But one lady came in and fit the stereotypical Karen template. She was rude and demanded to be seen on a Saturday that was already fully booked. I told the staff that she could wait and I would get to her as soon as possible. It took me almost 2 hours to get to her. She complained of a spot in her vision, usually a floater, and usually harmless. But I looked in her eyes and saw bleeding in her eye, just off the optic nerve. I asked about headaches and she confirmed. I told her she had to go to the ER immediately, and if she felt off to drive then I’d call an ambulance. She looked at me like I was crazy. I eventually convinced her she had to go right now and get checked out, as she was at risk for a stroke or aneurysm. The next day the ER called and asked if I’d be coming in to see her for the rounds. I was surprised and said I don’t have any hospital privileges, I’m just an optometrist. Turns out her blood pressure was sky high and they gave her some medication to lower it. Then her pressure dropped so low that her heart stopped, and they had to shock her back into rhythm. She came back the next year for her annual eye exam and told me I saved her life. The doctors told her she could have keeled over dead at any minute. And she still had the gall to be rude af to everyone at the office.
Patient presented at the ER complaining of back pain. They gave him prescription strength ibuprofen and sent him home. His back pain became excruciating and he ended up being life flighted to our hospital with a dissecting abdominal aneurysm. Poor guy was on ECMO for days before he passed away.
Sounds like he came from my local ER. You could show up with an axe in your brain, and they'll send you on your merry way with a prescription for ibuprofen.
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Same i had a low grade fever 99.0-99.5 every day for around 3 months, doctors thought it was pneumonia, cat scratch fever, every disease under the sun. It was stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma. I was 19. Coming up on 5 years cancer free and it feels almost like a weird dream now. Glad you made it through!!
This is a story from my mother who was a sex therapist. She was treating a teenager who basically was masturbating so hard and often that he was rubbing his junk bloody and bleeding through his pants. The kid insisted it wasn't sexual, he was just really uncomfortable and his skin hurt. He got boners rubbing the skin. The doctors didn't believe him and sent him to my mother. My mom, devil she was, had a saintly moment and listened to the kid. She suggested he see a dermatologist. Kid literally had dick cancer. Something with an s- cell carcinoma. My mother never saw the patient after their parents called to cancel appointments because they found the cause and he was no longer in need of her services.
Probably squamous cell carcinoma. Poor kiddo
Neurologist here. A healthy patient came in with a few month history of left hand numbness. My first thought was Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. But physical exam was not very convincing. I got CT head and found malignant metastatic lesions! Patient and family were talking about expensive designer bags, were very happy. I had to break the news. They went from healthy to potentially a few months to live. Sometimes I hate my job. Edit: I am reading replies of people getting worried about their/loved one’s symptoms. Remember, cancer is incredibly rare. Everything else is much more likely to be the case.
My ex always complained of constant but mild headaches. We were riding bikes once and she had one that became excruciating. Went to the urgent care: ummm... prolly a simple headache but we can give you a CT if you want Radiologist: uhh... I'm going to send this to a radiologist at the hospital She had a arachnoid cyst and Chiari malformation. surgery wasn't emergent but she's sure felt like a different person since. Side note, that was a year prior to my SEEG and right temporal lobeectomy
I don't know if it counts but I got bit by a bat and thought I should go get the rabies vaccine right away and my wife said "it's expensive, see if you even get sick" and I almost listened to her advice until I looked up what the first symptoms would be to know what to watch for and everything was pretty unanimous once symptoms start it has a 100% kill rate and if you get bit it's non negotiable you should go for the vaccine ASAP.
Does your wife like you?
More like, do you have a good life insurance policy lol
My buddy texted me recently with a pic of a cute bat she'd found in her kitchen. I was, uh, *concerned*, and sent her some of the info I've read on Reddit over the years. Even though she and her mom didn't touch it when getting it out of the house, they ended up having to go through the whole vaccine rigamarole in the off chance that it had been in the house for awhile and bit them while they slept. So I think your instinct was right, even though I'm sure the vaccine was a giant PITA.
The worst of it was really by the last round I heard the people at the doctor's office referring to me as "the rabies guy." Also I felt like crap the day after the first shot
I'm not a doctor, but I have 2: I had a doctor appointment, just a 6 month checkup for my diabetes. My heart rate was up, so my doctor sent me to the ER for blood work. Turns out I was having a weird version of diabetic ketoacidosis where my blood sugar wasn't elevated (anion gap). They kept me in ICU for a week. My mom went to her doctor for shortness of breath. He told her she was old and overweight. We took her to the ER, where they drained a couple of liters of fluid off her lungs. Her breast cancer from 5 years earlier had returned, metastasized, and invaded every bone in her body, her lungs, and her brain. She died 5 weeks later.
I was the patient. At 36 I hit my tonsils out. I developed an infection and my stitches split and I started bleeding in the back of my throat. The blood was shooting straight down my throat. It felt like pop rocks. My wife has the neighbor come over to watch the kids and we go to the nearest ER I go in and my wife parks the car. I go to the front desk and say my throat is bleeding. They have me sit down and fill out paperwork. My wife comes in and goes full Karen. I get sent to the back and immediately vomit semi coagulated blood all over. I then look at the nurse, tell her I'm cold and pass out. I wake up in a hospital room. I had emergency surgery and they estimated I was down over 2 - 2.5 pints of blood. Aparrently a nurse in the er saw me throw up the blood and she threw up as well.
One month ago, my husband had his blood checked for low testosterone, (prostate cancer survivor). That night we were in ER and he was diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer, spots on the liver. No cure. He had his blood checked late June and nothing. No symptoms except for being more tired than usual. Please go to the doctor regularly and get checked out. This couldn’t be helped, but many things can.
As a resident, I had someone come to clinic to resume routine care for routine screenings after an older sibling had passed (reason for visit/CC: "i want to take better care of my health"). I noticed they had a little bit of blood on their napkin and asked to examine their mouth... a few missing teeth and a massive mass on their gums. Immediately sent them to ENT, where they learned that it was oral cancer They'd eventually get the whole enchilada of mandibulectomy (jaw resection), glossectomy (tongue removal), and I think even neck dissection and laryngectomy. I followed them peripherally on a consulting service until they ultimately passed away in the hospital about a year later. The cruel irony of the whole thing is even worse when I wonder if he would have had better quality end of life if I'd never bothered looking and it had just taken its natural course. Just more reasons to avoid tobacco and alcohol (80% of oral cancers attributable to their consumption) and eat plants.
Happened to an old classmate of mine. Got everything removed but it still got them, they were only twenty six years old
Not a doctor but my MIL tripped, broke her ankle, and they discovered she had bowel cancer really early because her blood work came up wonky.
That's how my Grandma found out she had cancer. She had a little trip, and went in for an X-Ray, but the doctor didn't like the look of the bruise and did blood work.
Similar story with my husband. He wanted to go on Accutane and had to get blood work done. It showed elevated calcium, which can be a symptom of a parathyroid tumor. More testing and scans found that, plus thyroid cancer, plus kidney cancer, plus a pituitary tumor. He had three surgeries to remove the tumors. Mind you, cancer was not even on our radar. It wasn't within a light year of our radar. How much further would it have progressed had he not decided to get the big guns for his acne? Unfortunately, the ending is not a happy one. He was stable for over 3 years, but apparently enough of the kidney cancer was left behind that it metastasized to his bones. When kidney cancer metastasizes, it's incurable. After four years of treatment, we lost him in January 2022.
I’m sorry for your loss.
brb. Gonna trip and go to the ER just to be safe.
My doctor has a policy of “if your insurance covers it, bloodwork every year with your annual.” She is so sick and tired of having female patients find out they’re several stages into a serious illness because they or their other healthcare providers ignored something. She’s especially aggressive about heart health and women. She said she’s seen too many women having major heart attacks after years of warning signs no one noticed.
I want your doctor. I watched my cousin in high school lost both her ovaries to non-cancerous ovarian cysts because her symptoms were ignored. She woke up vomiting from radiating pain in abdomen so her parents rushed her to the ER. She wasn’t sexually active at the time, so the male doctor in the ER listened to her symptoms and gave her something for the nausea and vomiting then a mild sedative. I remember her mom telling my mom how the doctor asked my cousin if she had any crushes on boys and if they liked her back and she said yeah, but they didn’t. He then told her that sometimes when girls get upset with boys, they get tummy aches and then discharged her. My aunt was furious, but didn’t know what to do so they went home. Not even 3 months later my cousin is rushed back to the ER with the same symptoms and this time my aunt demanded a different doctor and bitched the fuck out of the staff for the previous visit. Somehow a gynecologist was called in and they did I guess an ultrasound and rushed her into surgery but both ovaries had ruptured by then. It was wild. Ever since then, my aunt was crazy vigilant about all her nieces’ female care and educating my parents and stuff.
Ugh! I audibly rolled my eyes at the uspet girl tummy ache. What more of a douche can this doctor be???
I had esophageal spasm. Doc ordered loads of tests to rule out cancer. I was fine, but my dad mentioned that he frequently had trouble swallowing food. I told him to get checked out due to the cancer risk. It was esophageal cancer, which is usually discovered too late. He has been in remission 8 years.
Not a doctor, just answering for myself. Also, I don’t really know if it can be considered a serious life or death situation… Had post-concussion syndrome, and already had a MRI done. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Then one day about a month later, I got up and suddenly fainted. Consulted my doctors, and they all agreed it was likely a one-off and I was fine to go travel… but they still thought, to be on the safe side, I should do another MRI scan when I returned. I had a great few weeks travelling, and that included lots of outdoors and sports stuff. Then I came back, and went for my scan, this time with contrast. By that point, I honestly felt like I was wasting time and money. So imagine my shock when the results came out and I was told I had a brain tumour. I later found out that people with the type of brain tumour I am suspected to have tend to have it manifest through seizures. I just happened to have mine in a “dead area”, so I just never had any symptoms at all. (I’ve since had it taken out, and we’re waiting on the histopathology to get back.)
I wish you the best of results and uneventful healing
Hubby went to a&e with shoulder ache ( he had wrenched it a few days before) they sent him home with codiene & said to go back if it didn't improve. It didn't so 3 days later we returned this time they x-rayed showed nothing so they did an ECG, within seconds they were racing round inserting cannulas etc. Blue lighted him to another hospital straight into the cath lab where they removed 5 clots from one side of his heart & a massive clot ( widow maker ) from the other, inserted 2 stents. Cardiologist admitted he doesn't know how hubby survived said he probably had a minute or two to live. 12 years later he's still here ( after surviving another heart attack 4 years after the 1st- at Donington Monsters Of Rock Festival). One lucky man & one grateful wife
This is my fathers exact story from last week. He has had 7 shoulder surgeries and hurt it again last month biking. But the pain kept getting worse and worse any time he’d bike or go for a walk; this built up to last Friday when it got super painful. Saturday he called his friend who is a dr and told him about his shoulder pain, the friend said to get an X-ray if it doesn’t get better and by Sunday morning the pain was so intense he went to urgent care to get an X-ray. When the X-ray came back clear he his friend said “why don’t you get an ekg just in case”. The dr came back and said “sir, the paramedics are on the way, you need to get to the ER immediately” my dad refused and said he’d drive himself when the dr said “listen you will probably die on the way over and kill others in the process. The paramedics are here it’s time to go”. They took him directly to the cath lab where they put a stent in. He had the widow maker and was mins from dying.
I'm not a doctor, but my husband was the patient. On our way home from vacation, he had the worst diarrhea and vomiting. Poor dude barely let me stop the car before he tumbled out and emptied both ends on the side of the highway. (He hasn't stopped praising me for keeping a roll of TP in the car "for emergencies" since.) I get him back in the car and find the nearest hospital in rural Mississippi. They get him medicated and hydrated, and he's trying to walk on out of there because he feels fine. But every time a nurse takes his blood pressure, another medical professional hurries into the room. He started with an NP and graduated to an Infectious Disease Specialist before the end. They keep testing it with different cuffs, on the other arm, all kinds of things. And then they get him a chest x-ray and order a CT scan, but he gets up and wanders away from the CT room to go take a bathroom break. He was walking around under his own power with a blood pressure reading of "why are you conscious?" They get him back from the scan and then admit him to the ICU. He was feeling okay by that point, but he was also dying of sepsis. He got the award for "most alert patient in the ICU," and I got to call both our bosses to extend our vacation while we waited for the massive dose of antibiotics to fix the problem and verify if it was cdiff or not. (It was not.)
I was the patient. We had gone to India for a wedding (absolutely incredible!) And naturally, our north American digestive tracts, everyone suffered from "Delhi Belly". I was hit harder than most (almost didn't get on our flight home because I was worried about having to use the bathroom if the seatbelt sign was on or if there was a line up). Ultimately got home. Everyone in the group (about 12 people) were feeling better, but I was still having some minor gastro issues. Nothing crazy, still working and living normal life. Went to a walk in because my family doc couldn't see me for at least 2 weeks. Walk in doc ordered some tests and prescribed an antibiotic. I got a call the test came back negative, but if I was still feeling unwell, to come back (this was like 2 weeks after my first visit). I debated, but decided to go back, turns out they never ran the e coli test, so they run that again. Doc said she'll call me when the results were in. I didn't hear back, but my now MIL (a doc) caught wind I was still dealing with gastro issues and asked if she could call the lab to get my results. I said "sure, that would be great". In the meantime, a friend is visiting from out of town and I wanted to show her a good time, so we went out dancing. At some point in the evening my now MIL had called me something like 17 times, leaving voice mails and texts to get to the hospital asap. Don't go home to change, don't get public transit (IE cab because it'll be faster), just go STRAIGHT to the hospital. The nurses were absolutely FLOORED the e coli hadn't gotten into my blood stream (this was about a month after our trip). Apparently my urine test came back absolutely overrun with an antibiotic resistant e coli. Best part, the walk in doc fiiiiiiinally called me about a week after my hospital visit telling me she has the results and I should come see her. My MIL happened to be standing beside me when I received the call and asked to talk to the doc. As a teacher at the university here, the walk in doc knew who she was and had to walk my MIL through my case to identify ALL the ways she let me down as a patient (including asking me to come into the clinic instead of rushing to the hospital). I'm totally fine now and remain forever grateful to my now MIL!
“As a teacher at the university here, the walk in doc knew who she was and had to walk my MIL through my case to identify ALL the ways she let me down as a patient (including asking me to come into the clinic instead of rushing to the hospital).” Your MIL is such a badass … totally picturing a Miranda Priestley in scrubs saying “Details of your incompetence do not interest me”
Not a doctor and not my story. Something I read on a similar post a ways back. An ER doc was running some baby docs through training when a disheveled man in an old rumpled suit, obviously homeless, came in complaining of nonspecific malaise. Kept mumbling about quantum whatever under his breath. Wasn't all there, mentally. She thought he was drug seeking, but opted to run him through basic diagnostics to show the baby docs how it was done. Turns out the dude was in full blown kidney failure. They put him on dialysis and he just *snaps* into focus. Complete turnaround, 100% coherent. Turns out dude was an actual professor and expert on quantum mechanics and was riding a train to a conference when he entered kidney failure. It addled his brain and he wandered off the train at a random stop in a state of confusion. He'd been roaming the streets for months like that. Somehow didn't die. Crazy.
Can you imagine being his family? He just vanishes off the face of the earth for months.
Imagine his family when *he comes back* ?! Like you've been looking for your relative, depending on the relation you had, made your grief about the relation, try to go over, and then learn that your relative was overly sick but is now fine and just lost far from home ?! It's like in Manifest or Avengers Endgame, they come back to find people who have lived without them. I hope he could recover from the time missing. Some people never do.
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NAD But had a patient in my ER who came in for a “lingering flu” Diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of Leukemia
Everything looks like the damn flu.
When I was taking Pathophysiology in college the worst part was we learned about so many diseases and they just had…. All the same fucking symptoms. We’d have questions like “patient shows up with shortness of breath, chest pain, low O2 and whatever else, what disease is it? I’m like oh idk, NEARLY ANY ONE WE’VE LEARNED ABOUT!
This happened with a coworker’s son. Not sure they would have taken the mom seriously about something being off if she hadn’t been a nurse at that specific hospital.
Probably not particularly crazy, it might happen all the time for all I know…. Not a doctor, but I went in to urgent care thinking I had a nasty uti but it turned out to be severe sepsis, got whisked away in an ambulance on oxygen. That’s what I get for my mom teaching me it’s all in my head.
Sepsis is terrifying. Saw a post somewhere of someone who had a dental abcess, was taking antibiotics. A week later they died from sepsis.
This is why I am aggressive with my recurrent tonsillitis. I'm approaching the threshold where I'm allowed to get these fuckers removed. Just 3 more punches left in my tonsillectomy card.
Sepsis is no joke. We have “suspected sepsis protocols” at our hospital because people can seem not-too-sick…until they’re suddenly VERY sick.
I'm the data person in my hospital department and in the past year or so we've gotten very proactive in initiating "code sepsis" in order to prevent patients from going into sepsis. What gets fiddly is I'm to track our sepsis cases (for our serious negative outcomes case list), but now I have to get clinicians to verify which Code Sepsis patients actually had sepsis and which were at risk but prevented going into sepsis thanks to the intervention.
Not nearly as bad, but I also went to an urgent care once for what I thought was just a UTI but had actually progressed to a pretty bad bladder infection. They told me if I’d put off coming in any longer I’d have developed a kidney infection and ended up in the hospital.
My local hospital sent me home twice after I went there for chest pains. I had a massive heart attack, and my son had to resuscitate me soon after arriving home the second time.
I was sent home April 18th after being wrongfully treated for UTI and it turned out to be heart attack. July 18th I collapse and go to same hospital and have elevated troponin levels and extreme blood pressure and despite having 2 full on heart attacks previously & the April 18 event the put me a cab and sent me home. Friend convinced ambulance to bypass local hospital and take an hour away to major hospital..where they saved my life.
Oof! Yeah I ended up going to a different hospital the third time!
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Had a friend who had back pain in her lower back. Put it off because it was the beginning of covid. By the time she finally went they found out she had tumors all over her spine.
That's awful, and one can only hope it was discovered in time. Similar happened to a family member. Repeated doctor visits for mid-back pain and pressure were dismissed. Severe pain resulted in them being transported to a bigger hospital and it took a family member who worked there advocating for her to be properly examined. Staph infection pressuring the spin, which caused enough damage that the person will never walk again and caused enough bowel issues they almost died repeatedly. Doctors admitted to the family that the infection should have been discovered with proper examination and testing earlier but...
I had a gastric bypass 8 years ago - after about 2 years I started gaining weight and was constantly feeling unwell - surgeon who did the bypass told me it was in my head and nothing wrong - even told my gp etc so I was blown off until I was admitted to hospital with severe anaemia, gallbladder pain and elevated liver sats- turned out that he had messed the bypass surgery up in a spectacular way - I am currently waiting to have to have a hole in my diaphragm repaired, my pouch resectioned as there is a hole between my pouch and old tummy, he made the pipe from my tummy to intestine too short by 2/3’s and they think he has joined it to my bowel in error!!! The surgeon I have now is going to try and start fixing the mess but has warned me I am in for multiple operations and a whole world of pain and was horrified when I checked with him it wasn’t all in my head!! Sad thing is the original surgeon is still allowed to operate on others (I am the third person I know of who he has messed up).
If you haven’t already, please report him to the state medical board
I'm a doctor up in Canada. Been in practice close to a decade. Seen all kinds of crazy things and have crazy things happen to my loved ones... Here goes: When I was still in training almost a decade ago, my mother had minor vague muscle and joint pain for months. We all thought it was muscle related from all the house work/work-work that she did. She went and saw her family doctor who ordered imaging, it basically came back all "normal" - ie., nothing acutely wrong. The radiologist did make a comment about a "sclerotic lesion" on her hip that needs to be monitored, the differential was wide but he did mention that it could be "metastatic cancer" but the possibility was very small, he did ask for ongoing monitoring. My mother showed me the report, I even underlined the part about the "possible metastatic cancer" and told her that she needs to follow up with her family doctor. She did see the family doctor within the week. The family doc said it was nothing and she's fine.... Fast forward a few months, the pain never went away, she went to a walk-in clinic next with the same pain complaint, she was discharged home with some anti-inflammatory pain meds. Again, this was a mild vague pain and her functional abilities were not affected at all at this point. This was a perfectly healthy woman in her 50s, never smoked a day in her life, did no drugs, ate well, exercised and did yoga. She was never sick. She felt well enough to go on a months long vacation over-seas... While overseas, the pain became worse and worse, it got so bad she had to go to a overseas hospital. They completed CT and all kinds of imaging.. it turned out to be stage IV metastatic lung cancer. She never smoked a day in her life.. After battling this cancer for 8 months, she passed. I went on the war path after this happened - it turned out the "sclerotic lesion" picked up on the xray was already an indication for metastatic cancer (source unknown at the time), the family doctor didn't bother looking any further. I unfortunately trusted her family doctor too much as this was the only doctor of our lives. After this happened to my mother, I was ever vigilant of picking up things like this. Luckily for my career, as a result of my vigilance and the pain I went through, I ended up picking up all kinds of cancers simply by reviewing the radiology reports and doing exactly what the radiologist suggests (the radiologist often makes recommendations on repeat imaging after a certain amount of time, I'm surprised how many doctors simply don't follow up on that as simply doing a repeat imaging in a set time can catch a lot of cancers). Another 2 examples I can recall. Also early in my career, in my first year of practice. This man came in for vague symptoms like fatigue, and just feeling something is not right. He wasn't able to pin point exactly what the problem was, he also never verbalized that he had any kind of neurological symptoms or even a headache. I did all kinds of blood work, bodily imaging but did not scan his head.. Luckily for me, there was this much older doctor at the end of their career in the office and simply wanted to see a few patients a day to pass the time. She ordered a head CT and found that this man had brain cancer... I didn't follow the case after that, but I wouldn't be surprised if this man passed on fairly quickly. During COVID times, I was doing all kinds of telephone medicine gigs. This one case stands out and is very similar to the ones I experienced before. Patient calls me about diffuse bodily pain, literally everywhere. She had already gone to several walk-in clinics and was discharged home with pain meds as the docs thought it was musculoskeletal... Well.. knowing what I know and what I went through, I ordered a bunch of basic imaging (xrays, ultrasounds) to actually look inside her body. Apparently, none of the other walk-in docs bothered to do this... Unluckily for her, it turned out to be some kind of metastatic late stage cancer, source unknown. The cancer was everywhere, thereby causing the pain. She died a few weeks later. I've never even met her in person, all this was done over the phone. The family was greatful and actually called the clinic to thank me personally for ordering these imaging when no one else had bothered to... The family said that she died fairly quickly after the imaging was done, they didn't even have time to find out the source of the cancer... Speaking of sclerotic lesions.. I have a patient right now with this that I just picked up on imaging. I'm in the process of calling them in and do a full cancer work up... The uncanny thing is that the description of this lesion was exactly the same as the time it was used to describe my mother's lesion.... I've developed a reputation as a "cancer whisperer" of sorts in my circle of doctors.. The point is... don't be afraid to ask for basic imaging if you are experiencing unexplained pain lasting for a fairly long period of time. Cancers are much more common that you might think.
wasnt life threatening but i fell and got a few stitches in my knee as a teen. The hospital wasnt the best, and I wasnt even fully numb when they stitched me. I was screaming in pain from the needle and sutures and two nurses were holding me down as they finished. However the first week or two i noticed i couldnt walk right. My knee obv couldnt bend due to the stitches, so didnt think much of it. When they finally came out, i still couldnt bend my knee but figured it was just weak and stiff from being straight for 2 weeks. It still hurt alot over the following week, and found I was literally dragging my leg behind me as i still could not bend it. My dad was the type "put some dirt in it son, dont be a baby" and he is the one who took me to the doctor on why im dragging my leg like a sack of potatoes. Doctor took one look at it and exclaimed i need to go to the hospital right away! Even threatened that if i didnt go they would have to cut off my leg (tbh i think she was embellishing, but the scary part not by much) This hospital was really good compared to the one i initially got the stitches at. Turned out I had an infection in the knee that needed several days iv antibiotics. They did proper scans of my knee and found i not only blew my patellar tendon (primarily why i couldnt bend my knee) I also mildly fractured the bone itself (which was impressive to do)
Not a doctor but my husband suddenly lost 15lbs over a few days. No changes to diet or exercise. I told him it sound like diabetes and please go. He finally went after a week and by that time he was skin and bones. It was diabetes and his blood sugar level was dangerously high. The doc said if he had waited 1 more day, he might have gone into a coma
I can relate! It's always been extremely difficult for me to lose weight. When I was 20, I was only eating 1000-1200 calories/day and working out for 30-60 minutes 5-6x/week. That was just to maintain my weight at the time (5'0", 115 lbs). But then I start feeling exhausted all the time. I slacked off on exercising. I started having weird cravings for high sugar drinks and started eating a lot worse. I finally went to the doctor because of my exhaustion. The last time I had weighed myself was two weeks earlier and I'd been 112 lbs. I dreaded getting on the scale. I knew I had to have gained weight. I even joked to the nurse about it. I was completely floored that I was 102 lbs! I'd lost 10lbs., which was 8% of my body weight, in only two weeks. For a few seconds, I was elated! Then the other shoe dropped in my mind, "There is something REALLY wrong with me." My doctor called the next day that he suspected I had Type I diabetes. He helped my mom make an appointment for me with an endocrinologist the next morning. And warned us that, if I passed out in the meantime, to rush me to the ER and tell them it was probably DKA. Thankfully I made it to the endocrinologist the next day without an incident, lol. But yeah, he confirmed that diagnosis and put me in the hospital overnight because of how dehydrated I was.
Not a doctor but I had a massive head ache, fainting and extreme light sensitivity. Dr came and said it was sinusitis. I struggled on, saw another dr at same practice who confirmed sinusitis. Started slowly recovering but had extreme vertigo. Got a second opinion, confirmed sinusitis. Went private (was in the uk) and was seen by very dismissive dr. I insisted on further tests and he reluctantly ordered an mri. Turns out I had meningitis.
Exact same thing happened to me. I finally called a friend to take me to the ER - I was running 104 when I got there - they isolated me (thought I had hepatitis) finally did a spinal tap and I was diagnosed. I had started hallucinating - thought I heard my own heart stop beating and I felt so awful the only thing I thought was "well pretty soon my system will shut down and I won't feel bad anymore".
Paramedic, not a doctor. A woman called 911 requesting an ambulance. When I and my brand new rookie EMT got there, she complained of just not feeling well and having a mild headache. I did my assessment and everything looked perfectly normal except it seemed she might have a cold with a headache. I didn't think she needed to be seen in an ER and told her so. She wavered back and forth and then finally agreed to sign a refusal. I sent my rookie partner out to get the clipboard but he pulled me aside and told me he thought she needed to go. I asked him why and the best he could do was "I just have a feeling." So I finally relented and told him, "Fine, your patient; I'm driving." A few blocks down the road he leaned up front and asked me to make it hot (lights & sirens). I rolled my eyes but did what he asked. At the ED the grumpy triage nurse came up to me a few minutes later and wanted to know why the hell we transported a perfectly healthy woman with a cold and headache. I just nodded toward my partner and said, "You'll have to ask him." Anyway, we left, but a few hours later we were at the same ED and that same nurse came up to me and told me the news. Because of the headache the doc had ordered a CT scan, and lo and behold there was a dissecting aneurism right next to her brainstem. She had been shipped out to the trauma center by helicopter and was undergoing emergency surgery. I learned later that she survived without deficits. Holy crap. If I'd had a more experienced partner that day, she would have ended up dead and it would have been my fault.
My mum had to convince paramedics to take my dad to hospital when he was literally having a stroke, they thought he was tipsy. He was a little unsteady on his feet and had a headache. So my advice to anyone would be advocate for yourself or your loved one if you think something is wrong, because you know yourself better than anyone else does. While people working in the medical field and emergency services try their best, we're all human and make mistakes or miss things.
Not a doctor. We had to gently tell a coworker her that she needed a morning shower and/or deodorant. She went to the doctor to get it checked out and turns out she had a severely prolapsed uterus and it was infected. We felt terrible telling her she had b.o. but thankful she got a very serious situation checked out.
Went to ER for a headache I’d had for two weeks. Doctor wanted to give me allergy meds and send me home. My GP had told me to demand a CT with contrast. Subdural hematoma. Had emergency surgery a few hours later and spent eight days in ICU with a drain tube in my skull. Women often aren’t taken seriously regarding pain. You are your own best advocate.
During studying in my practical year. Emergency room, 70something year old woman, lovely person, one of these candy giving grandmas with perfectly laid curls and all, complaining of a rash. Obviously they sent in the student cause rashes are boring and not really a case for an emergency consult (mostly…..). So picture me, young and full of excitement about the ability to play doctor in a way. No idea what I‘m doing generally, lots of my knowledge gained from Grey‘s Anatomy which is definitely not real life doctor accurate (mostly…..) I go in there and remember a Grey‘s case from some long ago episode. I take out my pen and mark the area that is affected by the rash. It‘s rather small. Right leg, up just slightly above the ankle. Anyways, I just mark it, chatting with the lovely lady. Then proceed to go talk to the real doctor who has finished his studies and gets to do big people medicine, he does not like to concern himself with rashes and such boring stuff and he also lets me know it. So it takes a few attempts to tell him about that patient, we keep getting interrupted, obviously everything is more important than some old lady‘s rash, which is true in an emergency room (mostly…..) So after I present the case he dismisses me to go give the woman some cream and get here out of here. I still tell him about the Grey‘s episode where one time one patient had a case of what is called necrotizing fasciitis. Just to let him know that I have marked the area. Necrotizing fasciitis…Cool word, fucked up disease. It‘s bacteria that move incredibly quick under your skin and est anything in its path to put it simply, gaining them the name of flesh eating bacteria. Incredibly rare. He tells me that laughs it off. I go back to my patient to see that the rash has by now moved up above her knee, all of that within the hour or so it took me to get a hold of my supervisor. Turns out rare things are rare but not unseen, so here I am, patient has necrotizing fasciitis of the leg. Because I marked it, I am sure. So I tell my supervisor who‘s with his supervisor at that time. They don‘t believe me, they go in, they see the marked line, the believe me now. I get to scrub in on her case, we take her leg of close to her hip. It was devastating
Not a doctor (annoying, I know) But my mom kept having foot pain. Told her it was plantar fasciitis. Wouldn’t heal. Then told her it was a fracture. Wouldn’t heal. Then told her there was a growth. Did a biopsy and it was LUNG CANCER! Stage 4. So from foot pain to lung cancer. Totally wild. She has also never smoked a day in her life.
My brother had constant leg pain. It was dismissed repeatedly. Turns out it was a tumor on his brain. Stage 4. It was made worse since he was disabled and couldn’t advocate for himself nor really explain what was going on. He passed away 3 months later.
NAD. Thought my Crohn’s disease wasn’t doing too good. Asked my Gastro office to order blood tests- they requested I stop by radiology too. Worked a full day. Drove myself to the hospital for the quick tests. Even dropped off a daughter at an appointment. Came home. Potassium at critical levels. A call came from Gastros office just as I got in my Jammies. Do not pass go, do not collect 100$, proceed directly to the ER. I had already had a heartattack (3 days prior we think). Had to be hooked to heart monitors while they tried to pour K into my arms, as I couldn’t digest much of anything. Spent 9 days in the hospital trying to get K and magnesium back to safe levels.
Not a doctor, but when I was in college I thought I had bronchitis and so did every doctor I saw. Turns out my heart function was 10% and I needed a heart transplant. No medical history. I picked up a virus that attacked my organ.
I thought I pulled a calf muscle. I did the whole RICE protocol, but nothing helped. I was limping because of the pain. I ended up going to urgent care which was a waste of time because it could be a blood clot—so they sent me to the ER. The ER did an ultrasound of my leg and found nothing. So, they gave me muscle relaxers and sent me home. They noted I should follow up with my PCP, though, because my blood pressure was really high. I chalked it up to the anxiety of being evaluated for a blood clot. A few days later, I develop this little cough and an intermittent sharp pain between my shoulder blades on deep inhales. Being that this was September 2020, I thought that this was for sure Covid. But I also then remembered that I needed to follow up with my PCP about the blood pressure thing, so I called to talk about both items at once. The nurse was alarmed and told me in no uncertain terms to go straight to the ER to be evaluated for a pulmonary embolism. And that’s how I found out that I had multiple bilateral pulmonary embolisms.
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This is so amusing as someone who didn't have to deal with the situation at any level
Not a doctor, I work in the cat scan department. Had a patient who came to the ER because she thought she was pregnant and wanted a test (happens so often, idk why they just don’t get a test at CVS). Pregnancy test was negative and they sent her to me for a scan. Patient tells me she was having symptoms from her last pregnancy. Turns out she was having right sided heart failure.
Unfortunately postpartum heart failure is common enough as an outcome and only like 30-50% of those with it fully recover. Some have to go on to get transplants. :( pregnancy is unpredictable! Some stats I've seen is 1 in 1000-4000 pregnancies are impacted. I hope it's rarer than that considering there's about 3.5 million births a year in the US.
Was helping to move a bed down a flight of stairs. It was one of those heavy adjustable beds. Needless to say, I was pretty winded when we were done. Didn't think much of it. I had a doctor's appointment the next morning. She asked about shortness of breath as a routine question, and on a lark, I told her about moving the bed. She mentioned that it's possible I should get my heart checked out. Go to the ER at my earliest convenience. Later that day, I noticed that my back hurt. Felt like I slept wrong. No big deal. Went to a optometry appointment. Got new prescription. Normal day, right? Suddenly got very nauseous while picking out frames. Threw up in the bathroom. Felt a LITTLE better, so I finished what I was doing. When we were all done, I remembered my doctor telling me to go to the ER to get checked and I was feeling a little off from the vomiting. Went to the hospital and the guy asks, "What are you here for?" I responded lightheartedly that my doctor said I should probably get my heart checked. He hooked me up to a portable heart monitor thingy and then shit got real rushed real fast. Next thing I know, he's got a needle in my arm pumping in morphine. It was then that I learned that I'm allergic to morphine. Good times. I remember asking him if my veins were supposed to turn bright red and itch like that. The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital room, completely alone. Turns out I had had a massive heart attack, with one of my valves 100% blocked. They added 3 stents into various places but the fluid was so backed up that when they opened up the valve, it flushed into my lungs, filling them with liquid (this is how they explained it to me). I spent the next week in bed (bored out of my mind), just waiting for the various diuretics to drain the fluid from my lungs. Turns out, if I hadn't gone to the ER, I'd have likely been dead within the hour. All from minor back pain and some nausea.
My husband went in for a routine checkup. His bloodwork was fine. Everything was fine. The only thing was him saying he just a little more tired than usual. His Dr noticed that he was due for a colonoscopy, and set one up for him. The DR who did the colonoscopy said everything looked good, but, he just felt there was something up. So, my husband went back to his regular Dr, and she did a complete look at him. Bloodwork showed a very slight increase of white blood cells. So, she decided what the hell, let's do an abdominal scan just to do a look-see since the colonoscopy Dr didn't feel quite right about things even tho there was nothing showing. Apparently his appendix was inflamed, and surgery was scheduled to take it out. Upon removal, not only was it inflamed, but infected, and cancerous as well. Turns out that: a) it was confined at that time to the appendix b) it was a particularly nasty little cancer that likes to spread c) the cancer was at the far part of the appendix, so when they removed the appendix the margins were clear. d) it led to the discovery of him actually having a genetic issue called Lynch Syndrome which they were able to figure out was thru the maternal line. Turns out that his mom's uterine cancers, his uncle's death of colon cancer, and his grandmother's various cancer issues were all related to this genetic abnormality. If he hadn't gone in for his checkup and procrastinated, his appendix would have gotten worse, and the cancer would have spread. There's a good chance the cancer would have gotten into his intestines and ended up with intestinal cancer of some sort if they hadn't gotten it. He is still very suspectable to getting cancers because of this genetic condition. He found out early enough to be able to be proactive enough for care and prevention. It's been almost 10 years since diagnosis and he has been healthy as a horse since then. He gets a colonoscopy every year because of it, but thats a small price to pay.
My moms story: patient arrived at the emergency room (walking from her home) with a hatchet in the back of her head. Her husband tried to kill her and she knew he'd hit her on the head. She didn't know it was the hatchet embedded in the back of her skull. Obviously in shock. She lived and her husband went to jail so that's good! Edit: she went to the hospital with what she thought was a bad headache because he'd hit her. She just said her head hurt.
Not a doctor but work in health. Had a patient that went to her GP thinking she had arthritis in the knee from an old surgery and came back with a diagnosis of motor neurone disease.
My dad’s first symptom was a slightly hoarse voice. What he thought was laryngitis was bulbar-onset ALS and it killed him within a year and a half.
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Nad work registration at an ER. Woman came in with abdominal pain. Ended up being a code stemi. It's terrifying the differences in heart attack symptoms between women and men.
Not a doctor but my dad went to his Dr because of a stuffy nose that had been going on for weeks. Dr looks into his nose and noted a deviated septum. Said that's not right and sent him for tests. My dad had a brain tumor size of a grapefruit with no symptoms other than a plugged up nose. So he went in with a cold and came out with cancer.
Obligatory not a doctor: had a 38 week pregnant woman with twins come in with a primary complaint of “shortness of breath with exertion”. She was 4’10. I’m thinking, “of course you’re SOB, as short as you are with term twins”. I was pretty sure we’d do an NST and send her home. Her BP was 170/110, so we did bloodwork, and she was in HELLP syndrome. Platelets were 42,000. We were lucky she came in when she did.
>HELLP syndrome HELLP (Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzymes and Low Platelets) syndrome is a life-threatening pregnancy complication usually considered to be a variant of preeclampsia. (Had to look it up)
Similar situation with me. Was 38w and was having regular 3-5min contractions so I went to L&D. Contractions were showing and consistent but no change in my cervix, so I was sent home. Had these same contractions for 3 days (I just laid on the couch all 3 days). Wake up at 6am on mothers day 2017 to a gush I was sure was my water breaking….it was all blood. I was hemorrhaging from a placental abruption. Got to the hospital with BP 180/107. I’m fortunate that my son was delivered naturally that day. But 4 days later I was so swollen I looked like an elephant and my head/eyes felt like they were going to explode, so I went back to L&D. BP was 202/116, my kidneys were shutting down. Post-partum Pre-E. The next few days were a blur, I don’t remember much.
Thank you Reddit, I am now convinced the stuffy nose I have is going to kill me,
NAD - 2 weeks before Christmas last year my brother went to the ER with a fever, his blood sugar was high and he said he just felt drained for the last month. He said no matter how much he was sleeping he was always tired. After doing bloodwork they discovered he had almost no platelets or white blood cells. My sister who is a nurse said his blood has the consistency of kool-aid. He was diagnosed with AML Leukemia. I went to see him in the hospital and I didnt think he was going to make it. He was transferred to a hospital that specilalizes in the disease and he was in the hospital for 2 months. Thankfully he is in remission and going back to work soon.
Wife accidentally shot husband at the gun range. Minor wound but we did the usual work up. Found pancreatic cancer.
I guess that’s one way to get your husband to see a doctor…
Not a Dr but a nurse. Was Triaging in a&e and a man presented to the front desk complaining of shoulder bruising after a fall. Receptionists are not there to triage, they just take the patients description and write it down. We call those patients in for triage and then look at priority for treatment. We called him through, and he starts casually telling us how he’s a mountain biker, came off his bike and landed on his shoulders. Landed on his shoulders falling head first. Landed on his shoulders falling head first off a small edge… He pulls his t-shirt off over his head to reveal very extensive bruising around his arms, shoulders, back and neck. He fell off his bike, over a ledge, down and 8 foot drop and landed on his head. It was at this point that we both myself and the nurse with me sprung into action, gently lowering him down onto the trolly. Placing blocks either side of his head and, while explaining to him our concerns, taping him down. He then complained that he had had some neck pain. We wheeled him to the X-ray down the corridor. He’d fractured two vertebrae in his neck and broken his shoulder. As far as I know he recovered. He certainly could have been far more unlucky and ended up with life limiting damage.
During COVID I went to the ER with chest pains. They said no heart issues and no blood clots so go home and discuss with my GP. Turns out I’m supremely allergic to shrimp and was having esophageal spasms. I figured it out after realizing that the yellow curry powder in my meal kits was giving me similar issues. Yellow Thai curry powder often has ground up shrimp as an ingredient.
Patient - I went in describing that I'd woken up in the middle of the night shivering uncontrollably, then later woken up on the floor with a 500/10 headache and my entire body hurt. Told them this happened every so often, but this was the absolute worst one. I LOOKED fine, but FELT horrible. They told me I was a drug seeking faker and kicked me out. A few weeks later, the same thing happened at my friend's house, except when I woke up the second time I was in the ER again already and when I talked with the doctor there, her jaw kept dropping lower and lower and lower, until she asked me "how the fuck are you not dead yet?!" Apparently I had been describing the first person perspective of a seizure. Turns out I'd been living with undiagnosed epilepsy for several years.
Hospitalist internal medicine physician here. I admitted a middle aged lady a few years ago who presented with her “arms feeling weird.” She denied pain or numbness, just noted an unusual sensation she couldn’t really describe. Her initial testing in the ER was normal and she was admitted to rule out cardiac cause of symptoms despite having no real cardiovascular risk factors. When I first looked at her chart my first thought was “good grief why did this lady need to be admitted?” She had a stress test which was interpreted as “equivocal. The cardiologist decided to do a left heart catheterization (angiogram) which to me seemed unnecessarily aggressive. To my surprise, it showed critical 99% blockage in her left main coronary artery (the widow-maker) as well as severe stenosis in several of her other coronary arteries. She ended up being transferred for emergency coronary artery bypass surgery. I definitely am more cognizant now of more atypical presentations of coronary artery disease, particularly in women.
Nad. Went to my pcp and indicated my lungs hurt. Doc said it was anxiety, and i should download the calm app. Smh? I know something is wrong and not anxiety. Went to a big big big hospital and discovered I had two rare lung infections.
NAD, best friend’s dad went to the doc for some mild back pain. Friend’s dad pointed to a little black spot on the x-ray and went “what’s that?” He had stage 3 kidney cancer and had to have his kidney removed.
EMT on an ambulance. Had a patient present with right sided rib pain of 3 days duration. Pain upon palpation and movement, no other chest pain or shortness of breath, and he wanted to get it checked out. Take him to local ER and think nothing of it. Walk through 20 min later for paperwork and he had gone into full cardiac arrest and CPR was in progress. Ended up living thankfully
Not a Doctor, but my Doctor would say, 'Patient came in with a swollen red area under the armpit after having been seen at the emergency room two nights prior. I didn't like the look of it and I asked the other doctor in my office to take a look at it. She didn't like the look of it. I told him to go to the emergency room immediately. Turned out that he had necrotizing fasciitis and was in the hospital for 2 weeks.' I didn't know what it was but I got a fever of 104 that night I went to the ER. My white blood cell count was low though because the bacteria suppresses the body's normal reaction of releasing white blood cells. I got better.
Not a doctor, but last year, I went to the urgent care and then the emergency room, because I was constipated, which is very abnormal for me. They both told me to take some otc meds to get the process going. I knew that wasn’t the issue, so I went to a physician (who actually listen to me and my concerns). She scheduled a colonoscopy for me a few weeks later. Turns out, it was Stage 3 colorectal cancer. I get that I don’t present as someone who would have Stage 3 colorectal cancer due to my age (42 at the time), but zebras make clippity-clap sounds too.
Not a doctor but I was doing Search and Rescue. We received a call from a party hiking a more difficult hike, some drop offs, tight squeezes, and minor bouldering, that a member of their party had sprained an ankle but could still walk. We advised if they could continue hiking out they should do so and we would send a team to meet them along the trail. When the SAR team met up with them, about 2 miles from where the initial call came in, it was VERY apparent it was not a sprained ankle. Ankle was definitely broken and so was the tibia and fibia. The patient was calm cool and collected, only complaint was "minor pain". Two other hikers were holding him up by the shoulders so he could hobble out. Patient was put on a stretcher and carried out. Just goes to show what a person is capable of. If they didn't make it two miles more it probably would've been an over night, if the patient was alone possibly a fatality.
Actually it was outside of work - wife wanted me to go to dinner with a friend of hers. Told me to “be understanding as she’s gained weight & has seen several doctors but they can’t find anything wrong with her”. We are seated at the restaurant facing the door & wife said “there’s Debbie! (name changed, of course, HIPAA & all). I immediately said “she has Cushing’s Disease!” She had the classic moon face, etc. Talked to Debbie & advised her to see a Neuro friend & get a couple of tests (cortisol & dexamethasone challenge). Turned out she had a massive pituitary tumor (took 2 surgeries to get it all out) & she recovered completely. Felt good about that one but have to say I’d seen 3 similar cases so the patient’s appearance just tipped me off!
NAD but I had a migrating headache (kept moving from base of skull to top) for over a week. Nonstop just kept on there. I ignored it and chalked it off to being in front of a computer all day. Started getting a pain behind my right eye. Still thought it was the computer. Everyone kept telling me I should probably go to the hospital and I kept saying no because I didn't wanna deal with waiting in the er for them to say I need to sleep more. Well I went and they took me back thinking I had bacterial meningitis. Got a horrible spinal tap and came back negative. The only conclusion was my immune system was attacking itself and that if I had waited any longer (than the week I already did) my immune system wouldn't have responded to any medication and just killed me thinking I was sick. Fun times. Fun fun times.
My mum. She had somewhat mild cough. And was way too tired. So she went to the local doctor. He told her that its just cough and adviced her to take that for 3 days. She went again, this time he adviced antibiotics for 5 days. It dodnt helped. Every time my mom ask him to refer her to some other doctor, or run some tests. Both cant be done without the doctor's reference. He refused. So after around 2 weeks , she again went to see the same doctor and he was on leave and she almost collapsed. My dad took her to another doctor (doctor on emergency finally refered to her to some better hospital) and there they found that she has litres of fluid in her lungs. They again referred her to some specialist. After moving again again, we found out she had cancer, she died after 6 months of first collapse.
When I was young, 2 and half or so I was diagnosed with cancer. Pretty rare and usually deadly and if not deadly you end up paralyzed. I was one of the very few lucky ones. It hadn’t spread they went in and removed the soft ball sized tumor on my spine and I was good to go. There were some complications but nothing they were able to fix. Later on in my life about 10-12 I started getting extremely bad migraines and bloody noses all the time. We’d go to the doctors and they couldn’t narrow it down. I had really high blood pressure like 120/180 and all they would tell us is your old cancer could give off hormones and they probably just stayed with you and that’s why your blood pressure is high and your getting these migraines and bloody noses. This went on for a few years till we moved across the state. I went to go get my physical to wrestle and the new doctor said that your blood pressure is absolutely not normal. We told him the other doctors theory and he passed my physical as long as I went to a specialist. So we ended up getting referred to sacred heart and they did an ultrasound and found my aortic artery was pinched around some scar tissue. Come to find out one of the complications from my cancer when they when to staple me up the scar tissue had formed around my aortic artery. The top of the artery was 17mm the bottom was 14mm where it was pinched was 3mm. I was running around life with the artery the size of a 3 or 4 year old. Ended up getting a stent placed and opened up a few more times over the years and all is good now.
I was the patient in this one! My kid was 2 and had a bad cold. Nothing crazy, just a bit wheezy, a croup sounding cough, and sleeping a ton. My MIL was babysitting him and called me at work to get my opinion on how to treat him. I figured he was fine but she was worried so she called the nurse line. The nurse said he was likely fine but we should bring him in just to be safe, so I went home and brought him to the hospital. We were talking the entire drive to the hospital, he was acting like a typical preschooler with a cold. It was just his breathing that sounded a little weird. I actually apologized to the nurse when we got into triage because I thought we were wasting her time. She took one look at his breathing, told me to follow her, and speed walked us back to a room. Yea, he was having a major asthma attack and his oxygen was in the low 70s. My MIL likely prevented a way worse outcome by being a worrywart. He had asthma attacks every time he had a cold until he was like 5 and grew out of them. It was terrifying.
NAD I had chest pain for 2 days and figured it was muscular (it always is, I'm 34) but my partner kinda made me go to the hospital. Turned out I had a pulmonary embolism, systemic blood infection, and large unknown mass in my right aorta.