You wake up one day and you're not feeling well, so you decide to Google your symptoms and browse through WebMD to figure out what might be going on. And then your worst fears come true, your tummy ache is a sign of impending death. But that's according to the internet, not a doctor, which is why matching symptoms with info on the internet is no substitute for a doctor visit.
Wakanda4eva4eva asked doctors of Reddit: Who has been your worst "but I looked it up on WebMD" patient?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
16. Good Luck With That, Mama
So does Pinterest count too? I had an odd experience recently. I'm a recovery room nurse and while discharging a patient, her daughter told me this: "All diseases and medical conditions can be cured by eating specific foods. I have done my research. there is a lot of information on Facebook and Pinterest. My mother shouldn't be here-she just needs to eat more sweet potato." For context, the patient had a double mastectomy and lymph nodes removed where unfortunately the cancer had spread.
15. Diving Board To Conclusions
The person who refused to tell me what symptoms they were actually having.
They had decided that they had pneumonia and any time I tried to ask what they were experiencing they just said "I have pneumonia! Don't you know what the symptoms of pneumonia are?!" Pretty sure they looked it up, decided they had, but couldn't remember the exact symptoms...
14. You Just Don't Fit The Bill
Nurse here. I have a lot of WebMD stories, but my favorite is the 57 year old woman who came in for routine visit and a request to try a new medication that she saw advertised on TV. Her visit was for a complaint of increasing urinary retention over the past three weeks. Most urinary retention in women is due to a mild bladder infection... very common in women that age.
When we asked her about the medication she wanted to try, she said the TV ad said it was for urinary retention, so we listened. She took out a scrap of paper with the name of the medication scribbled on it: Flomax. Well. That's not what'll work for her and the doctor quickly said he could not prescribe it for her. She was a little offended at the refusal and asked why not. The doctor said, "Flomax is for benign prostatic hypertrophy and you don't need it." She demanded an explanation. The doctor bluntly explained, "This is treating an enlarged prostate. Women don't have prostates."
13. Should Believe The Professional
GiphyI've worked in a pharmacy on and off for the last ten years so I've heard quite a few doctors stories about patients. One I recall is about a patient who was suffering from severe migraines and was adamant they had a blood clot in the brain. Quite an assumption to make, doctor assured them it wasn't anything so sinister and was most likely sinusitis. Of course the patient didn't believe him because Google told him otherwise so he decides to go private and spend close to £500 on tests and private care only to be told you've got a sinusitis infection...
12. Unexpected Turn Of Events
How about a best? Dude comes in after looking up chest pain on WebMD and it tells him he's having a heart attack. He actually was.
11. Even In Los Angeles
Nursing student here. Woman age 55 told me she was impregnated by the holy spirit because her periods went away and she hasn't been with a man in 2 years since her husband died. She wasn't pregnant. But she's never heard of menopause.
They also had us doing flu shots and a girl comes in looking really apprehensive. I asked are you pregnant? She said "Well, my girlfriend fingered me and I'm scared I might be pregnant and I don't want my mom and dad to find out I'm gay." This is why we need proper sex ed.
And after these stories y'all might be thinking. Oh he is somewhere in the south. In Hicksville. Nope. Los Angeles.
10. Granny should read the labels!
I'm not a doctor, but I did take my very elderly Nana to the hospital after I showed up to her house and found her slurring her words and behaving very strange overall. Now, my Nana is a major hypochondriac and when she was admitted the first thing she told the doctor is that she believed she was experiencing the beginning signs of Parkinson's.
It turned out that she had mixed up a bottle of non-alcoholic wine with a bottle of regular wine, had drank the entire bottle, and was completely hammered.
Honestly though the sensation of being drunk would be so disconcerting if you weren't expecting it
Yeah, the symptoms of being drunk are similar to the symptoms of being roofied—that's why people in bars usually don't notice if someone's slipped something into their drink until it's too late. It's super freaky.
9. Come on people...
Serious answer: I try to ask my patients if they have Googled their symptoms. It gives me a lot of information about what they are worried about. I then try to stay humble about their findings, and try to not be a jerk about that. Trust is not built by telling people they are stupid. However, it is hard to keep a straight face when a 50-year old male walks in and says "I think I have caught the Down's syndrome," or when a young women thought she had testicular cancer.
I actually had pretty advanced serum sickness from strep/penicillin and the nurses told me I was not having any problems. The doc in the ER said he didnt know what it was but looked it up himself and said, "yup! You do have serum sickness!"
It felt nice to be listened to.
However, it is hard to keep a straight face when a 50-year old male walks in and says "I think I have caught the Down's syndrome", or when a young women thought she had testicular cancer.
This totally reminds me of something that would happen on House, like this lady and her inhaler.
8. That's... not how it works.
The other day I had a guy come into the ED in tears because he had wrist pain and the nurse at his work's occupational health looked it up and told him he has multiple sclerosis.
I love good nurses but there's areas that they are not trained in. We did an appendectomy on a patient who was like, maybe 4 weeks pregnant. After the surgery the nurse called me saying she couldn't hear the fetus's heart anymore...after telling the patient that maybe she had a miscarriage during the surgery.
Turns out the nurse used a Doppler preop and mistook the Iliac artery for the fetal heart rate...and then couldn't find the artery post op.
Several levels of wtf in that one.
Edit: you cannot hear a fetal heart at 4wks with...anything, ever.
7. So close.
This will make my friend sound stupid, and she really isn't. When she had her first baby and was in that woozy/sleepless/new mom phase, she took the baby for her checkup and completely misheard when the doctor told her the baby had eczema. She got home and started Googling what she thought he had said, and called me in a panic, saying, "The doctor said the baby has emphysema!"
Why, that infant never smoked a day in her life . . .
This reminds me of when I was getting married and my husband and I were looking for a hotel to stay at on our wedding night. He called me and said he found one that had a honeymoon suite and included in the package was "strawberries and shampoo." We still laugh, almost 30 years later, at the thought of toasting our new marriage with shampoo and not champagne.
6. Some things should be obvious...
In this day and age of the internet, I'm still surprised people don't use web MD more....
Just this week I was in our workroom when a senior physician sitting next to be was on the phone and suddenly grabbed my arm while desperately trying to keep a straight face. The senior physician was talking to a 24-year-old female patient and the conversation was going:
"No Ma'am... You can get absolutely get pregnant even if you don't orgasm... No Ma'am, just because he's feeling nauseated the morning after doesn't mean you're pregnant..."
I mean the Web MD page on this is pretty darn good....
just because he's feeling nauseated the morning after
WTF.
It's actually horrifying how little humans know about our own bodies.
Especially since everything can be found on the internet. At 24 there is no excuse for not being able to Google.
There's also a LOT of misinformation on the internet, particularly when it comes to health. A big reason that there are so many pseudoscientific health movements today is because bullshit health blogs are often the first thing to come up when you type things into google. Not only that, but "real" science is often inaccessible to those outside of the field, and behind journal paywalls.
Source: am med student, used to google things when I forgot stuff, led myself into way too many rabbit holes and now I just use UpToDate (~legit WebMD). If an article doesn't credit any sources, smash that back button.
5. Yes, by all means, breathe water.
RN, but my favorite was when a patients family member rudely insisted we give her mother who had a major stroke (resulting in nearly zero swallowing capability) as much water as she could drink because "I read a study online that said you can't aspirate on water because your lungs just absorb it back into your bloodstream." I looked her dead in the eyes and said "Ok, then explain drowning to me."
Oh gosh. Save us from the daughters that read stuff online.
I did home health care and took care of a lovely lady in her nineties. She had very bad diabetes, and even though she was constantly monitored and checking in with her doc multiple times a week, it still was not unusual for her to run between 250-300 after dinner, a carefully measured and balanced dinner. It freaked me out every time I saw it.
Anyway, her daughter kept telling my about this juice cleanse she heard about. I kept telling her that it was a really, really bad idea, but she kept bringing it up because her chiropractor talked about it all the time.
I went on vacation for a week, came back and my lady is gone. Hospitalized. You guessed it, as soon as I was out the door her daughter started the juice cleanse. She was going to prove me wrong. Amazingly, this little tiny 97 yo lady managed to do well enough for 3 days. 3 days until the evening nurse clocked her blood sugar at over 700!!!
The EMTs couldn't believe it. She was groggy and nauseated, but still conscious and her sweet self.
She was in the hospital for over 2 weeks because they just couldn't get her sugars to balance.
She came home, but had even more problems than before. Her daughter wouldn't even look at me. She nearly killed her mom to prove herself right.
The icing on the cake, a week after she went home, she gets admitted to the ICU for...you guessed it...aspiration pneumonia caused by the daughter trying to feed her solid foods.
4. People should at least know what parts they have.
I had a woman come to see me because of abdominal pain. I spent a good 10-15 minutes of asking her questions to get a better understanding of what could be happening. I ended up ordering an ultrasound to assess for an ovarian cysts and some blood work. As she's leaving she goes "are you doing lab work for my prostate?" I had to bite my tongue so as not to laugh and said "no, because you're not a male and you don't have one." She just said "oh." and left.
Spoiler alert - she had an ovarian cyst.
Our family doctor once asked my husband if he was pregnant as she went down a checklist. They had a good laugh.
I once told a woman she didn't have a prostate (when asking about the result of an ultrasound) and she was just appalled, I blame myself for a string of misscomunication that was like: Lady: so dr how is my ultrasound? Me (writting down the report on the note, totally distracted): oh it is fine, normal Lady: so everything is normal, even my prostate? Me (again suuper distracted): Oh, yes, you don't have a prostate Lady (freakout) WHAT? Why? Is that the reason for my pain? Me: no, you just never had one Lady: What? Wtf? It can't be Me: believe me you've never had one Lady: Oh really?? then, how am I still alive if I do not have one? Me (now full attention on this trying not to laugh): Excuse me ma'am, that is an all male organ, you don't need one to live, it produces fluid for the sperm Lady: Oh.
3. We have doctors for a reason.
Librarian here. Before Web MD/Dr. Google was (is) a medical textbook called 'The Merck Manual'. While intended for medical students/Doctors, it quickly fell into the hands of decades of self-diagnosers. I once heard it described as "Hypochondriac's handbook since 1899"
Still being published in print and available for free at https://www.merckmanuals.com
Keep in mind that this is a publication by a pharmaceutical company that profits from the sale of pharmaceuticals. I'm not saying it's not valuable, nor am I implying that there is anything unethical in pharmaceutical companies benefitting from more accurate diagnoses, but a self-service manual like this cannot and should not replace a medical professional's unbiased opinion. Check with your GP before you use even over-the-counter treatments.
2. They aren't remotely the same thing.
Sad and long story but to keep it very brief. Lady on 4 vasopressors including high dose epinephrine, was gonna die in the next few hours. Husband was convinced that epinephrine was causing the low bloodpressure and low heart rate. He kept going back and fourth from home to the hospital with online printouts despite myself, my fellow, and my attending, and the nurses all telling him that this medication is keeping her alive. We looked at his first printout, it said, "ephedrine" we're like uhhh first of all, thats not the same medication. Anyways, I actually tell him that if I was him, I'd stay with her and that she may only have minutes left. He's threatening to sue us and he's convinced he's right, he goes home again to get a new print out, and she ends up dying while he's at home.
1. WTAF.
I'm an RN in pediatric neurology. We frequently have families who refuse to put their kids on seizure medications regardless of the EEG findings and the fact that they, you know, have seizures and stuff.
One family "did the research" and attempted to cure the child's epilepsy with essential oils, over the counter CBD oil, yoga, metal ion wristbands (to "balance" the brain). They even went as far as having the kid's dental fillings removed and replaced with a non-metallic filling.
There was the time that someone told us she didn't need medication because if you opened a fizzy can of Pepsi and put it under her nose she would come out of a seizure. If that didn't work, you could whisper "Reese's Pieces" in her ear and she would stop seizing.
My least favorite visits are from parents who refuse to believe that their kid is twitching because they have motor tics and likely Tourette's instead of epilepsy. Like, if it was a choice between Tourette's and epilepsy, you should choose Tourette's all day long. Why these parents are hell bent on giving their kids a diagnosis of epilepsy is beyond me.
I just don't even know anymore.
Why these parents are hell bent on giving their kids a diagnosis of epilepsy is beyond me.
I'm thinking there's still a big stigma against Tourettes, while most lay people don't realize how bad epilepsy really is.
There really is, my mother has a form of epilepsy and her seizures make her weak for a day or two. Not to mention if gone unchecked it can have serious impacts on the brain. Tourettes though, which my cousin has, comes in many forms and doesn't harm the person. Learning to cope with tics is much easier and less jarring compared to epilepsy.
There was the time that someone told us she didn't need medication because if you opened a fizzy can of Pepsi and put it under her nose she would come out of a seizure. If that didn't work, you could whisper "Reese's Pieces" in her ear and she would stop seizing.
Wtf?
- Doctors Share Their Anti-Vax Patient Horror Stories - Knowable ›
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- Doctors Share Their Funniest 'I Googled My Symptoms' Patient Experiences - George Takei ›
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.