Medical professionals are some of the most trusted experts out there. However, nobody’s perfect. Even the most skilled, sharp, and knowledgeable experts make mistakes from time to time. It’s only human. However, some mistakes can have extremely far-reaching and terrifying consequences for your health.
Some of the members of the r/AskReddit community spilled the tea about the worst medical misdiagnoses they have either experienced or heard about. We’ve collected their most powerful stories for you to read. Check them out below. Meanwhile, it’s a good reminder to always get a second (and maybe even a third or fourth…) professional’s opinion!
#1
I started gaining 20 pounds a month and multiple doctors told me I was eating too much. By the end I could barely walk to the kitchen to get food or even stand up. I was down to less than a thousand calories a day and still gaining weight. I was finally hospitalized and it was end stage liver disease.
The first night I was in the hospital they stuck a huge needle in my abdomen and sucked out 10 liters of fluid. Over the next six months I lost 150 pounds of fluid 14 liters at a time once a week. I eventually had a liver transplant. I was not a drinker and there never was a diagnosis for why my liver failed.
Image credits: blippityblue72
#2
I had the starting symptoms of tonsillitis. I knew it was this and I knew I was about to get so sick, I wouldn’t be able to stay awake longer than 20 mins, let alone see the dr, so I went and asked for antibiotics. It’s important to note that when I get tonsillitis, my entire body shuts down, all my glands come up, and I just sleep.
So I go to the dr, and he does an examination. Says my throat is only a little red atm, and feels my abdomen and feels a lump and asks if it hurts when he pushes it. I say it hurts a little but more like it’s sort of more uncomfortable. He sends me straight to the ER with a note.
I’m in there for hours. My temp skyrockets to 42 degrees Celsius, I’m delirious, they are doing all these tests and I tell them it’s tonsillitis. They don’t believe me. They eventually think since the test came back inconclusive that I have appendicitis. The surgeon tells me he’s the specialist, not me and this can’t possibly be tonsillitis. They take my appendix. The surgeon then yells at me for having to come in at 9:30pm on a Tuesday night to take out a perfectly fine appendix. They then discover I do have tonsillitis
TL;DR: my appendix was removed bc I had tonsillitis and no one listened to me.
Image credits: MissMurder8666
#3
I was diagnosed with BPD and severe anxiety, along with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (basically seizures caused by anxiety and stress). I was having multiple seizures every day and had one so bad I wound up in the hospital after I couldn’t stop seizing for 15 minutes. The doctors thought I was faking everything because of the BPD diagnosis until they did an EEG.
Turns out I just have chronic high blood pressure, so high that it was giving me seizures. It’s been two years I’ve been on beta blockers and I haven’t had any attacks, and my BPD diagnosis was removed.
Image credits: threadbarefemur
#4
Flu symptoms for months on end after being a very healthy, very active child until this point.
Thank god the nurse at the urgent care took one look at me and said “hey, what if we did a blood sugar test on this anemic, fruit scented, child-corpse?”
My flu was actually type one diabetes and I was going into keto acidosis and was so far along my blood content now contained acetate. My blood was literally nail polish remover. I went into a 4 day mini coma, had my first NDE, and then woke up to a whole new universe where pixi Stix and grape juice were illegal.
Image credits: sylverkeller
#5
My best friend was misdiagnosed with IBS when she was 35. She had vague digestive symptoms that had started about a year before. She had a colonoscopy, an endoscopy, then another colonoscopy, all clear. Then she began to lose weight without trying, while her belly stayed bloated. She went to see an OBGYN, who said my friend was fine, just a little "fat" on her abdomen. The very next day her new GP sent her immediately to a gynocological oncologist. She had stage III ovarian cancer. It took about 18 months of GI complaints to get a correct diagnosis. By the grace of the gods and the flying spaghetti monster, she is a 20 + year cancer survivor. Turns out, she has Lynch Syndrome, a familial cancer disorder
#6
All through high school and college, I had constant nose problems. They were diagnosed as sinus infections and allergies, so I was on every common allergy prescription out there. None of them ever seemed to make much of a difference, but that’s what the family doctor said.
I moved to a new city and went to a new doctor for something unrelated. I mentioned the long history of allergies and he asked if I’d ever had a CT scan. First time that had ever been suggested to me. I had it done and it showed that I had a severely deviated septum. One side of my nose had basically closed in on itself, creating a great environment for infections and making it harder to breathe. From the way it had healed, the doctor thought it was likely due to a broken nose when I was a kid.
I’d never knowingly broken my nose, but I’d had a bike accident when I was eight where I went over the handlebars and somehow got a cut on my nose in the process. I never quite figured out exactly how it got there or what it impacted, but was the only thing I could remember that involved my nose. There was no pain afterward or change in the exterior at all.
One quick laparoscopic surgery and a couple days with a very sensitive nose and it was like night and day. Over a decade of sinus pain, headaches, struggling to breathe during school runs and getting heckled about being out of shape or just trying to get out of it, and turns out I was working with half a functioning nose the entire time.
Second opinions are your friend.
#7
My GP said I was probably just tired and diagnosed me with fatigue, during the next two year I lost the ability to walk and started shaking before I got diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
He thought it impossible to be my age and get it so it never crossed his mind.
Edit: I had symptoms at 29 but diagnosed with Parkinson’s at 33.
Image credits: Mateba6
#8
Every single thing that I have ever complained to doctors about have been because I was fat or faking it.
#9
Back in 2008 my dad was just “not feeling right” and hadn’t been for a long time. After two weeks of tests they told us he had aggressive Lymphoma and needed chemo urgently…and he’d be lucky to have another year.
One of the doctors who had run some of these tests disagreed with his colleagues and refused to sign off on the chemo, this was on a Friday and they wanted my dad to start chemo the next Monday.
Well the doctor who wouldn’t sign off was right, he ran some more tests and proved my Dad was just coeliac.
16 years later he’s still with us living his best gluten free life!
Image credits: Lizzy_Tinker
#10
My friend’s doctor kept telling him his headaches were just stress. I said try my doc and get a second opinion. worst case your out $30 co-pay…. my doc sends him for MRI or whatever and it turns out my friend had survived a brain aneurysm. apparently it was close to the “surface” of the brain and those are more survivable than those deeper down.
Image credits: monogreenforthewin
#11
Not me, but a friend of mine had a seizure at age 16 and had been taking keppra for like 15 years. She stopped seeing neuro since she hadn’t had a seizure in years; her PCP was prescribing the keppra.”
“She started having seizures again out of the blue with disorientation and speech so slurred her boss started accusing her of being high at work. She finally got in to see a neurologist, who did an EEG and said she was fine, but increased her meds just in case.”
“I urged her to get a 2nd opinion, as I was sure that sounded like a tumor with the sudden onset and breakthrough seizures with the increase in meds. Turns out, it was a tumor behind her ear.”
“Second neuro referred to a neurosurgeon and she had to have brain surgery. Since then, she’s had no seizures and hasn’t been on any seizure meds whatsoever.
Image credits: Fickle_pickle_2241
#12
Dr sat my mother and I in a room and told us that my adult mentally challenged brother “will not be leaving the hospital and we won’t know what killed him until his brain is on the autopsy table” .
10 + years and he is still using said brain. I told Dr it was the new meds they were trying, he disagreed , I insisted they switch him back, they did, he got better.
#13
Had a cough that was keeping my bunk mates up at night (military) and one of them demanded I go to sick call. I did and the LT said I would stop coughing when I wanted to and it was all in my head. I went back and told her what they said. She said to wait until after hours sick call (civilians) and go again. I did. It was pneumonia.
Image credits: Ready_Set_Go_123
#14
My left thumb was in constant pain, couldn’t make a fist or grip a mug. Saw the nurse practitioner at our local place. She said it was just over-use, gave me a velcro wrist brace and told me to take ibruprofen.
A few months later, it got bad again, went to the urgent care at the same facility, saw another NP. She sent me for a hand XRay and said it was DeQuarvain’s Tenosynovitis, basically inflammation of the tendons around the thumb joint, and told me to follow up with a hand specialist. She gave me a new wrist brace, with a thumb stabalizer, and that really seemed to help more.
Hand specialist, a week or so later, tells me there is literally nothing wrong, nothing he can see on the XRay to indicate DeQuarvain’s. At worst, he said I have “maybe a little arthritis.” He told me the brace should help if I want to keep wearing it, just don’t over use it, take inbrofen. I wore the brace pretty regular when it got bad, tried to be mindful of it to avoid flare-ups, but it just sucked all the time lol.
Fast forward a year or more, I broke my left arm/wrist in 4 places, needed surgery to pin it all back together. The surgeon tells me, “I noticed from your XRay, it looks like you’ve got DeQuarvain’s Tenosynovitis too. I can release that while I’m in there.”
He did and my thumb has been fine ever since.
Not really a crazy story but so frustrating!
#15
Being told that I’m too young to have the health issues that I legitimately have is so infuriating! I am 39 (40 tomorrow, Woop Woop!) and I just recently got my ‘official’ diagnosis for the arthritis that I’ve had since my early teens.”
“I can’t tell you how many doctors told me that I have all the symptoms of osteoarthritis, but that just couldn’t be right because of my age. I finally got a referral to a rheumatologist who listened and now my insurance company is refusing to pay for the medication they prescribed.”
“Last person I spoke with said I might have to get a second opinion due to my age. I swear, the more health issues you have, the harder it is to be taken seriously by medical professionals.”
“The amount of times my very real symptoms to several different issues have been blamed on ‘anxiety’ should be illegal, I swear!
Image credits: LalaThum
#16
My husband was diagnosed with ‘substance abuse disorder’ when his spinal cord in his neck was literally crushed and he was nearly paralyzed. He wasn’t even prescribed narcotics. He just asked for an MRI. He went on to need an 8 hour neurosurgery.
#17
Deployed on an aircraft carrier and a guy in my squadron said his arm was feeling weaker than the other so he went to medical and they said he just needed more electrolytes and gave him a gatoraid. The next day in port it had gotten so bad he went to the hospital in England and they told him he had had a stroke.
#18
I went to a GI when I was having severe abdominal pain that made me feel like I was having a heart attack, couldn’t breathe, just absolutely miserable.”
“He didn’t want to do an ultrasound because he thought it was acid reflux. Turns out I had a gallstones.”
“You have to advocate for yourself. Some doctors don’t listen.
#19
Diagnosed with depression and anxiety for decades, and at one point, bipolar. Just another female 80s baby with adhd (diagnosed at 40🤦♀️).
#20
I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, social phobia, borderline personality disorder, and OCD before finding out it’s autism.
#21
When I was in the Marines & in combat training at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, shortly after basic training, I started noticing a pain in one of my feet. I was in a class at the time and it progressively got worse as that class dragged on, and I mentioned it to a guy sitting next to me after he noticed me squirming around like I was uncomfortable. He happened to glance down and said, “Oh my god, dude…look at your foot.” It was starting to swell so much that you could actually see it through the jungle boots I was wearing.
I went to a Corpsman (medic) to get it checked out and it was so swollen by then that they had to cut the boot off, and I guess because my foot had swelled up so much the skin broke, but the wounds from where the skin broke looked like a snake bite. So the initial diagnosis made by the medic, was that I had been bitten by a venomous snake.
This is like 45 minutes to an hour after I first noticed pain, so the whole time the humvee was taking me back to a hospital (we were out in the field at the time), which felt like an eternity even though it was racing at high speed on these dirt roads, I was thinking I was definitely going to die.
Fortunately at the hospital it was diagnosed as cellulitis (a bacterial infection), which can be potentially serious too, but it felt like good news compared to a venomous snake bite. I probably got it from a blister from one of the many humps (forced marches) we were doing, later getting exposed to swamp water.
Image credits: Pixelated_Penguin808
#22
Got bit by a tick the size of a pin head. Started blistering in a weird way. Pretty sure it was Lyme’s.
Went to urgent care. “we’ll do a test for Lyme’s to calm you down, but it’s shingles” (I was 31. Not impossible but highly unlikely)
Lyme’s test came back negative the same day the area around the bite mark started to form a bullseye.
Drove myself to the smaller ER further away. Nurse walks in. Sees me. Sits down and goes “so we’ll wait for the doctor for the official diagnosis. But you’re going to be in for a world of sucky antibiotics”
So yes it was Lyme’s. I saw the tick and got it off me before it was able to spread over my entire body, allegedly. Remember folks! If you find a small tick on you, save it so they can test it for diseases!
#23
My, thankfully slow growing, brain cancer was ‘pre-diabetes’ and ‘kid needs glasses’.
Image credits: RickyTheRaccoon
#24
For years, doctors and teachers told me I was subconsciously faking sick because of was afraid of school. I had an immunodeficiency.
#25
I saw my doctor when I was 25 years old because my toes were numb.
Diagnosis: poorly fitting shoes.
Yeah, ok, I had super stinky feet so I always bought cheap shoes. Never heels. As I aged I sorted out the stinky feet (connected to psoriasis) and I started buying nice shoes but still, my toes never regained feeling. Ahh I guess I permanently damaged them.
Lost feeling my right hand a few years later. ER diagnosis was, and I quote what was said to me face after a physical exam and nothing else “well it’s not a stroke *shrug* bodies are weird” I literally continued on with life with limited feeling/sensation in my toes and my dominant hand.
At 37, from my knees down would go numb when I was lying down to try to sleep. Weird. It got worse and spread up my legs so I went to my doc (different from years earlier).
Yeah, I had/have MS.
I guess no harm no foul for the original diagnoses since I’m not diabled, right?
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