You ever get a migraine and think you have a brain tumor, and you get super paranoid about it, but then when you go to the doctor, they just tell you it's from stress from your emotional trauma? Yeah, me neither. But thanks too the beauty/awfulness of the World Wide Web, we can all Google our symptoms and assume we're dying together.
Take a look at these poor folks who misdiagnosed themselves. Lay off the WebMD next time! Trust me!!!
U/PizzaFlavoredRanch asked: What self-diagnosis did you give yourself that turned out to be completly wrong?
When you automatically go to the worst case scenario, you may end up looking really f*cking stupid.
Wow, I hate this.
I thought I had worms when I pooped so I fished one out from my poo and put it in a little box and showed the doctor. Turns out it was a noodle.
Have you started chewing more?
My boobs hurt reading this.
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TL;DR: (not) breast cancer.
When I was a teen I woke up with mild boob pain, but told myself that it was all in my head and went about my day. As you do.
But by the time midday rolled around it was so bad that I was literally hunched over, groping the offending titty in the middle of class. It felt like it was on fire and trying to shoot off my chest, and I had to hold on tight to keep it attached.
It couldn't be calmed, so I got my dad to come pick me up from school and take me to the hospital. I for sure had breast cancer, but we did some of his errands before going to the ER because he didn't think it was anything really serious. The whole time I was holding my chest and stifling cries because I was definitely about to die from breast cancer and it really f*cking hurt. Edit: not his fault, I didn't clue him in to how bad it actually was.
At the ER I embarrassed myself further by telling them all of this. Imagine being the doctor/ nurse that has to reassure a 15 year old that she's not dying from "acute breast cancer". Pretty sure they were laughing at me in the nurse's station.
Anyway, it turned out that I had an infected abscess, and it was decided that the best way to get it all out was to squeeze it through my nipple. The (army) doc went at it like he was replacing engine parts, knee on the bed, both hands grabbing my poor tiddy like it owed him money or something; I remember hating how much his hands were shaking from the effort, for some reason it made me ridiculously nauseous. I didn't even get the courtesy of a safe word. They told me that I screamed and passed out briefly, and I don't remember much after that except really appreciating the painkillers and a few days off school.
Not having breast cancer was also pretty cool
Mazel tov.
When I was 11, I convinced myself I was bleeding to death. I thought I was peeing or pooping buckets of blood and that's definitely not good. Right before I went to say goodbye to my family, I remembered that thing they told us about in sex ed like 6 months ago. It was a period. I got my period.
Oftentimes, misdiagnosis can come with an underlying mental illness. It’s insane what anxiety can do to a person.
Hypochondria is no joke.
I had hypochondria as a teen. The most horrifying by far was when I gave myself an AIDS diagnosis and kept it all to myself. Only now, many years later have I been able to share this with my closest friends. I was sure I wasn't going to see my 18th birthday. There was no way possible I could've had it and I didn't have any symptoms.
This internal panic lasted for about two months and became to a halt because I realized how ridicilous it was. With that stopped also my hypochondriatic thoughts once and for all.
I know some people aren't that lucky and can't shut it down with just the power of logic. That's why hypochondria is no joke. That sh*t eats you up inside.
Been there.
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I diagnosed myself with a brain tumour due to headaches. Was so convinced that I got a CT scan and turned out there was nothing wrong. Anxiety is a b*tch and will help convince you of anything negative.
I suffered constant headaches at one point. Turned out I was very dehydrated as I don't often drink.
Panic attacks will do that to you.
I had just moved to a different country and had to do a 14 day quarantine. By the 8th day I started having stroke-like symptoms. Having trouble breathing, heart palpitations, body going numb, not being able to speak properly. I was sure I was going to die and that it was definitely a stroke or a heart attack. I got taken to the hospital only to be diagnosed with panic/anxiety disorder. It didn't make sense to me at the time, but now it does.
This is terrifying.
I was having frequent episodes where my vision would blur, my tongue felt swollen, my speech would get slurred, my concentration would drop to null, I would stagger, I would have goose bumps. These symptoms would come all at once and would last for hours. Once they were gone, I felt exhausted.
I thought for sure that it was something neurological. Lots of testing later, turns out it was a conversion disorder. The symptoms were an adverse reaction to stress and anxiety.
Treatment is helping (drugs, therapy, etc.). The episodes are a lot less frequent now, and also less severe. But I was forced to retire because of this. I didn't like that part. Still having trouble adjusting to that part.
While they do suck sometimes, believe it or not, misdiagnoses can come with unexpected surprises.
That would’ve been some really bad ceviche.
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My aunt and I both got really sick, like throwing up for almost two weeks. Decided we had gotten food poisoning from some bad ceviche at a family gathering.
Nope! We were both pregnant. Had babies three weeks apart.
Gross, but better than the alternative.
One time I felt this terrible feeling in my gut when I was on my way to school. I had been feeling uncomfortable all morning but then it hit me much worse, it was this sharp pain I couldn't ignore anymore; It was awful. I thought I was dying. I told my mom "take me to the ER" she said "what's wrong? Can it wait?" And I said "no, Mom, I think I'm dying! Something ruptured! I feel like I'm being stabbed!" And she spun around like you see in the movies and started speeding and I curled over. I thought I was about to pass out the pain was so bad and then.... then I farted.
So I sat back up and said "It's okay. I'm better now" in the calmest possible voice to my mom- who at this point was panicking and driving like 90 in a 50- and she turned to me and said "did you just fart?" And she turned the car back around and took me to school. We never spoke about it again.
Same.
Narcolepsy, turns out I'm just built different and need like 13 hours of sleep to feel satisfied.
That's called hypersomnia.
In regards to that last one, I also have hypersomnia and it SUCKS. But hey, it just means more nap time.
Moral of the story, go to your freakin' doctor. It's always better to be safe then sorry, and the copay is less expensive than a future ER visit. Do future-you a favor and get it taken care of early
Ok, who is watching the clock? Those seconds aren't going to count themselves. The only way to understand time is to be its witness. Although that can get depressing. Let's focus on the light and cool.
History...
Calculate Figure It Out GIF by OriginalsGiphy"If you are an 80-year-old American, you have lived through approximately 1/3 of our nation's entire history."
Those Days...
"The 80s were 40 years ago."
"This is what messes me up because I was born in 82 and graduated high school in 2000 so for some reason my brain is stuck on the 80's being twenty years ago. The 70's thirty years ago etc etc. I have to stop and realize sometimes that my concept of how long ago things happened is way off."
Time goes by...
"We observe that light travels at 186,000 miles a second, but given the vast size of the observable universe, that's a snail's pace. But from the point of view of a particle of light, time doesn't even exist."
"Time slows down as you approach the speed of light, and theoretically stops completely when you reach the speed of light."
Years Gone By...
"MLK Jr. and Anne Frank were born in the same year."
"Betty White was born in 1922. Automatically pre-sliced packaged bread loaves became commercially available in 1928. Betty White is six years older than sliced bread."
Long Live the Queen!
queen elizabeth images GIFGiphy"The queen and Marilyn Monroe would've been the same age."
"And Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith were born on the same day!"
- osme1
I swear Liz is going to outlive dirt. Wait, I believe she already has. Well she won't be alone, she'll have Betty White. At least she better have Betty. Time is nothing without Queen Betty.
TV Time
Season 2 Omg GIF by Paramount+Giphy"Happy Days was a TV show made in the 1970s-80s about teenagers in the 1950s. Similarly, That 70s Show was made in the 90s-00s about teenagers in the 70s. If a similar show were to be made today, it would be about teenagers in the 2000s."
- VVillyD
A Croc
"If a T-Rex imagined a creature as ancient as the T-Rex is to us, it would be a Stegosaurus. If that Stegosaurus imagined a creature as ancient as the Stegosaurus is to us, it would be a Crocodile. If that Crocodile imagined a creature as ancient as that Crocodile is to us, it would be a Shark."
On the Clock
"On a twenty four hour clock the amount of time that humans have been on the earth would total around five seconds."
"How about this one: If Homo Habilus first appeared at midnight, 24 hours ago, that means the first Homo Sapiens appeared at 9:25 PM, or about 2 and a half hours ago. The first human civilization, in lower Mesopotamia, appeared at 11:57 PM, or about 3 minutes ago."
"The Western Roman Empire fell at 11:59 PM, or 1 minute ago. Everything that has happened since - the Crusades, the Plague, the discovery of the New World, the world wars, all of it - has happened in the last minute of human existence."
And that's just OUR Sun...
"The span of our lives are so insignificantly small that our Sun will last another 5 billion years. That's 9 zeros people. Our eldest live to around 100 in the best places. That's 50,000,000 (50 million) times longer than any person can reasonably expect to live. And that's just OUR Sun. The universe as a whole has probably existed for magnitudes longer than that already and will continue to exist until the end of time as we know it."
Tell Me a Story
william shakespeare GIF by will herringGiphy"We know what a good storyteller Shakespeare was but there were Greek playwrights who wrote shows nearly 2,000 years earlier that are pretty good, too."
I hate time. Only because I'm petty and irritated of the amount I squandered. That's neither here nor there though. Time marches on and continues to amaze. I'll keep watching.
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