People Who've Had A Serious Illness Describe The Exact Moment They Knew Something Was Really Wrong
As a kid, I never raised alarm bells even when I started to feel sick. My mom got stressed easily and was busy taking care of my younger brother, so I never wanted to be a burden by making her take me to the doctor only to find out nothing was wrong.
However, in fifth grade, my ears started to hurt and I knew something was wrong. I told my mom, she took me to the doctor, and I found out I had an ear infection.
Now, an ear infection isn't serious at all, and it was easily treatable. Still, I learned something from that experience: no one knows your body better than you. You know if and when you're sick and how serious it is, even if you don't now exactly what is wrong.
Redditors can corroborate this. Many of them have experienced symptoms that told them they were sick in some way -- usually with a very serious illness -- and are ready to share those experiences.
It all started when Redditor thelearner18 asked:
"People who have had a serious disease (cancer, MS, organ failure, etc) when did you realize something was really wrong?"
A Lesson Learned
"Hust found out i have rectal cancer. 42 yrs old. multiple stools per day, not fully emptying, thin poop. so got a colonoscopy. bam! cancer. starting chemo next week. lesson learned for everyone....if your stools or stool schedule changes, go see a doctor"
– shawngee03
A Lucky Break
"I had been having a lot of pain in my midsection, and all around my torso for several weeks. I went to the doctor and it was dismissed as gynecological cramping (menopausal?). It remained. After several weeks (6-8) I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to emergency in the middle of the night. I got a CT scan that showed a large kidney stone. They also found a mass on my ovary. The kidney stone lead them to finding a rare ovarian cancer. If not for that stone, I wouldn’t have known about the cancer and might not have caught it in time. I have been in remission since September 2021."
– peachsqueeze66
Cause For Concern
"My kid, who was 14 at the time, kept throwing up in the morning and having weird headaches. Her doctor thought it was migraines. She went back a couple of times, but the doctor was not concerned. Then one day she complained of a whooshing noise in her ear. Went to the children’s hospital and found out it was a brain tumor near her cerabellum. She was in ICU for a month, but turned out it was non cancerous and it never grew back. She is doing great now."
– Evilelfqueen
"I heard a whooshing noise in my ear a few years ago I only really heard it at night when it was quiet it would sometimes switch ears now I basically never hear it. I'm pretty sure it was just pulsatile tinnitus but still scary."
– fallen-summer
It Was The Salt
"I have Cystic Fibrosis (terminal lung disease) and it was found out when I didn't sh*t for 3 days after I was born and then my mother gave me a kiss and said I tasted REALLY salty."
"Now I'm on a gene modification drug called Trikafta and this is some serious witch craft a** sh*t because I no longer feel sick to death and I basically feel like a normal person. It's f*cking wild!
"Went from 19% lung function to 87% in 3 months. I no longer cough my a** off or feel like I'm suffocating from mucus. Go science!"
– Sudden_Blueberry_477
A Funky Optic Nerve
"I was diagnosed with MS when I was 22 after having blurred vision in one eye after a ski trip. I went to the optometrist and they said I had a dry eye probably from not wearing goggles while snow boarding. So they gave me steroid drops. After a week it kept getting worse, so I went back and they told me my eye looked much better so they did a field of view test, which showed I couldn’t see anything out of the lower half of one eye. They sent me straight to the emergency room since nothing was wrong physically wrong with my eye. They did some tests and I was diagnosed with MS and ended up going completely blind in one eye. My vision eventually came back and I got on medication within a month so haven’t really had any symptoms or issues since thankfully. I’m only 29 now though."
– johnjohn9312
Caught It In Time
"This isn't me, but this happened to my best friend VERY recently. Like in the last couple of months."
"Was perfectly fine and healthy one day. Then the next he started feeling a little bit of pain in his kidney. He'd had kidney stones before, so he figured it was that again. Then he started peeing blood. He thought it was still part of the kidney stone thing so let it go for a couple days, but he was still peeing blood and the pain was getting worse."
"That's when he decided to go to the doctor. They did an X-ray and found a mass in his kidney and told him that based on where it was located they can't remove the mass, and they can't do a partial kidney removal, and it's about a 90% chance it's cancerous, but they wouldn't be able to do a biopsy without removing the kidney first. They did the whole insurance dance, but it went fast and within two weeks he was in surgery having his kidney removed."
"He's still recovering at home right now, but they got the biopsy results last week. It was indeed cancerous, but they caught it before it spread."
– SweetCosmicPope
Happily Ever After
"I couldn’t walk anymore with my crutch I had been using to get by. Had Been on Percocet for 8 months because of the extreme pain. Nobody was finding answers to my pain but I knew something was wrong, badly. After finally having an ultra sound on my hips at the age of 26 I found out I had to undergo a double hip replacement to walk again due to a serious rare disease. I was stage 4 Avascular Nercrosis. Took a year to recover from both. But Happier ending, I’m doing good now. However it was very very upsetting news to get over a phone call at 26."
– heartpathetic
It Really Sneaks Around
"My wife started getting numbness in her right arm. The breast cancer had spread to her right shoulder and the tumor was crushing the nerves. She has stage four breast cancer in her bones."
– zenos_dog
A Turn For The Worse
"For me, it started May 14, 2014. I went to work and was having a good morning. Then, at about 9:00 in the morning or so, I started to feel some lower abdominal pain. Not to be crude, but it felt like that cramp you get when you really need to go to the bathroom. I did so, but the pain didn't go away. It got worse. I started to feel chills, was sweating, and felt nauseated. My employer has a clinic on site, so I went there. After some poking and prodding, the nurse asked me if I wanted to go home or if I wanted to go to the emergency room. I decided to go home, and if the pain didn't subside, then I'd go to the emergency room. As I was saying that, though, I noticed that my pain had gotten a LOT worse. They always make you rate your pain on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain at all and 10 being the worst pain you've ever felt. When I went into the clinic, I was mostly uncomfortable, maybe a high 2 going into a 3. On that very subjective scale, I was now a 6 or a 7."
"I changed my mind and decided to go straight to the nearest emergency room. My boss drove me, and by the time we got there about 15 minutes later, I was now a 10. This was the worst pain I'd ever felt. My previous definition of the worst pain I'd ever felt was when I broke 7 bones in my wrist, it was misdiagnosed as a sprain, and I had to have them rebroken 2 weeks later. The pain in my abdomen was now worse than that. The emergency room admitted me and put me in a wheelchair. They wheeled me to a room, I curled up on the bed they put me in, and passed out."
"At some point, a nurse came in and gave me some morphine. Great stuff. No pain at all anymore. A doctor came in and told me they suspected a kidney stone. He wanted me to get a CT scan to confirm it, and I agreed. An orderly wheeled me off to imaging. I got scanned without contrast and was wheeled back to the room. My wife had arrived while I was getting scanned. Shortly later, the doctor who told me he thought it was a kidney stone came into the room. With another doctor. And two nurses. They all crowd around me with solemn looks on their faces."
"The first doctor told me it was a kidney stone. A 2 to 3 mm kidney stone had been lodged in the ureter of my left kidney. That's the tube that goes from the kidney to the bladder. It passed into my bladder when they gave me the morphine, but they could see evidence of it on the CT scan. Then the other doctor said they were more concerned about the 6 cm mass they found on my right kidney. They had my attention."
"They did another CT scan, with contrast this time, and it was impossible to see anything but a tumor in the pictures they showed me. They made an appointment for me with a urologist for the next day, as well as an appointment in a few days time to get it biopsied. It was an after-hours appointment for the urologist, but he was nice enough to stay late to see me. He looked at the CT Scans and cancelled my appointment to get it biopsied. He said there was nothing else it could be but cancer, and the kidney would have to go."
"Two months later, I had the kidney and the tumor removed laparoscopically. I was incredibly lucky. They caught it in stage 1. The doctor said there were signs it was going to start moving soon. I have no idea how doctors can look at a softball sized lump of cancer and tell anything other than 'gross', but that's why they're the doctors and I'm not."
"My recovery was smooth, and I've been cancer-free for 9 years. I was incredibly blessed. I didn't have to deal with chemo, or radiation. While those can save your life, they are also horrible experiences with nasty side effects. I didn't have to deal with any of them. I was bracing myself to have to. They said it was a possibility. But I didn't. I have every respect for those not as fortunate as me, and wish them all the best in recovery."
– mnementh9999
Reason #5,622 To Start Exercising
"I started jogging again to try and get back into running shape. I kept noticing that just after a mile or so, I'd stop and get REALLY lightheaded. Kept thinking, "oh, I'm really out of shape" and kept going. Went in a few weeks later for my annual physical and doctor said "you ever been told you have a heart murmur?", no. Two months later I spent Christmas of 2017 in the ICU after having a section of my aorta cut out and a new valve put in. Surgeon said it was bad. Said it wouldn't have made it too much longer."
"Edit: for clarification, it was an aortic dissection."
– Itsawlinthereflexes
Slow And Steady
"My dad's friend went on a hike with a doctor who knew him and he was winded not far from the car. The doctor clocked it right away and told him to get his heart checked. He had 98% blockage in his heart arteries."
"He tells my dad so my dad gets the test to see how his arteries are doing and they found a massive aneurism on his aorta. He is getting it removed tomorrow. He had no symptoms but the doctors said if he had overdone it he would be dead before anyone would even know what was going on. Crazy how a random friend's hike may have saved his life."
– Pencilowner
It Takes A Village
"I never did, my teacher and parents did."
"I was seven, usually an active kid and my first grade teacher noticed that rather than running around at recess I sat down and took a nap. It happened a couple more times and after I fell asleep in class (totally out of character), she gave my parents a call, we had been visiting the doc fairly regularly cause I was also complaining of joint pain and frequent ear infections combined with the new symptoms and a new doc at the practice I was finally diagnosed with leukemia."
– greenmachine11235
Thank goodness for that teacher (and of course, the parents)!
People Describe The Scariest Thing They've Ever Experienced In Their Life
Life is a roller coaster of experiences—from the amazing and happy to the truly horrifying. As great as moments like winning a contest, graduation, and your wedding day might be, there are also terrifying moments like losing a loved one or getting into an accident that you might experience too.
Redditor LuckyAdair asked:
"What is the scariest experience you have gone through?"
[Content Note: the following article contains stories of various traumatic events, such as loss of a loved one, injury to a child, armed robbery, murder, and suicide. Reader discretion is advised.]
"Get The F*ck Out Of My House"
"Someone breaking into my house last year."
"It was really early in the pandemic and my wife was in the bedroom asleep, I was in the living room with headphones in playing video games with some friends while my son was asleep in his little jawn next to me. Was maybe 8PM."
"Basically I stood up and took my headphones off, and turned around just in time to see this guy in a bright red ski mask (which is way scarier than black it turns out) opening up the doors into the living room / dining room area I'm in. Nearly sh*t myself."
"He pauses, I'm like, frozen for a second but then stammer out 'get the f*ck out of my house' and he just lunges at me. Like, he wasn't armed, he wasn't bigger than me, I think he just panicked and thought he could knock me down and run...or worse..."
"But uh, it turns out when someone breaks into your house and your entire family is home and your child is now crying while you fight a tweeker in your living room...some really primal sh*t kicks in, and I fought the guy until I had him in like, my approximation of a choke hold (not a fighter), before shouting for my wife to call the police, who arrived like, instantly because:""My friends heard the entire thing on/through discord and one of them called the police."
"Was over in under 5 minutes but I couldn't use headphones anymore while I gamed in that room (we've since moved), I don't like having my back to doors, and I had to get a few stitches on my hand from how I fell."
-PlayerH8rzBallz
Armed Robbery Is Traumatizing
"Scary, just a few weeks ago I got robbed at gunpoint by three guys that came up behind me. It was 9PM and right in front of my house. Even when I complied and gave them my cash, they still punched and kicked me afterwards. My focus was on trying to make sure they didn't get my keys either to my house, where my wife and kids were at the time, or my truck that I was unloading. They did get my phone though and dumped it off a bridge.
"The police found it, but it was smashed to hell, but they did get prints off of it and there is a warrant out for one of the guys. Still scary that they know where I live."
-crlarkin
Get Out Quick
"My husband calling me to tell me his brother killed his parents and that I needed to get the dogs and myself out of the house immediately in case his brother was on his way to our house."
"I was incredibly fortunate that a neighbor let me hide the dogs in her garage and come in until my husband gave me the all clear to go home."
-storyofohno
"How did this end? Did the brother go to your place? Did end up in jail or underground?"
-kipopadoo
"He also set several fires across town (including his own property and his parents) and then killed himself in a confrontation with the police."
-storyofohno
Close Encounters
"Was doing some mineral exploration work up in Alaska this summer in a very remote mountain range. I was working at a drill site where a grizzly had been spotted at the rig earlier that day and I was naturally a little on edge. I was laying out some wires through very thick brush (couldn't see through it at all), and all of a sudden I hear a really large animal close by, and I smelled the typical wet dog bear smell."
"Before I had time to react the wire gets ripped out of my hands and dragged into the brush at probably 20mph. I'm freaking out trying to reach my gun and this massive bull caribou just pops his head out and looks me over, then walks away lol."
-jackkymoon
Fear Isn't Always Short-lived
"It's happening right now."
"My wife is in the ICU with pneumonia on top of a year+ long battle with cancer. Sedated, on a ventilator and barely clinging to life, her heart could just give out at any time and that's it."
"I'm literally sitting in her room all night fully expecting to lose her sometime tonight or in the next couple days."
"Ive been through some scary moments in my life, but in a completely different way, this is by far the scariest night of my life."
-DerpingtonHerpsworth
Just Trying To Make Pizzas
"Got a couple knives pulled on me one night while working at a pizza shop. Had a little mexican standoff. First time experiencing the thought "I might have to stab this dude or be stabbed'"
"Luckily our pizza knives were bigger and with my coworker backing me up the two dudes both left. I owe my life to my coworker from that night, dude had my back."
-ASmufasa47
Rockslides Are Terrifying
"I got caught in a rockslide and fell off a cliff while backpacking. Early Spring, things were starting to melt, we were hiking on a ridge and looking for a way down the side, maybe a 60 - 70 degree loose scree slope, to a stream about 500 feet below. I was in the lead, heading down at an angle, rocks kicked out from under my feet, and I fell backwards onto my butt."
"All of sudden, the entire slope around me began to move en mass, like an island of broken up rocks with me sitting in the middle. I rode it down the hill, bouncing off stuff and trying to stop myself and dig in but no luck, just picking up speed."
"At the bottom, the hill dropped off to a 40 ft cliff, and I was launched off with the slide. I landed in a pile of debris and loose stuff that previously came down, including a lot of loose snow, which mostly absorbed the energy. I was mostly OK, muddy, lots of scratches and bruises, a separated shoulder and broken tail bone, but I was able to walk out."
My one memory is being in mid air, time standing still, and looking to my left at a stove-size boulder likewise suspended in the air, about 6 feet away. Any good size rock would have killed me."
-psilome
"Impending Sense Of Doom" Doesn't Quite Cover It
"When I was a teenager I had an irregular heart rhythm, and required a medication called adenosine."
"Adenosine is usually given via infusion just once or twice, in hospital under careful monitoring, and the side effects include an 'impending sense of doom'. This side effect relates to your heart beat temporarily stopping. This fires signals to your brain, telling you it's time to panic. Or you've reached the end."
"'Impending sense of doom' doesn't begin to describe it. I was told in advance, but nothing prepares you for it. I went from sitting on the hospital bed, just finished a sandwich and thinking about my year 11 exam, to suddenly being certain that I was going to die here. I've never felt so sure of anything - I couldn't move or speak, and my mind suddenly raced very fast, to the extent I couldn't keep up with my own thoughts. It was similar to what you hear about your life flashing before your eyes."
"My brain was drowning, and telling me to find more oxygen - even though I was breathing fine. I was suddenly sure this was a nightmare, that this hospital was fake and all the doctors and nurses were actors, and I was poisoned."
"Then it was over in seconds. I haven't had a single heart problem since."
-manlikerealities
Seizures Can Be So Scary
"My son had his first seizure while I was driving. He was in the back seat and I heard a noise. I looked in the rearview mirror and he was convulsing with blood running out of his mouth. Then he collapsed, I thought he had died. To this day, I don't know how I was able to get off the freeway, call 911 and check his pulse. He was 7 years seizure free on Nov. 29, but that one day changed my life forever."
-bodicea-h5
Am I Going To Drown?
"Being held underwater by some classmates in highschool. Not the worst or most damaging thing I've gone through, not even close to being the worst incident of bullying, but it was the most frightening."
-ILikeBakingCookies
Words Nobody Wants To Hear
"'It is cancer. I'm sorry'"
"I was 34, and had just gotten married a few months earlier. Stage 2. Grade 3 triple negative, invasive ductal carcinoma."
"I'm OK now, treatment was successful."
"But three years on, my husband cheated on me, we're getting divorced and my only chance to ever have children (after the chemotherapy left me infertile) remains with the 12 embryos currently stored in a freezer somewhere."
"So now I have to decide if I want to be tied to the man who ruined everything and betrayed me, by having his children... its my only option if I ever want to get pregnant."
-TNBCisAB*tch
Where Is Everyone?
"I don't think that's the scariest thing that happened to me but it's the one I can remember now."
"I was sleeping in class and when I woke up the class was empty and it was dark outside so I got up started panicking and ran down 3 stories of stairs in 10 seconds only to find out that it was break and it was dark outside because a storm came in the half hour I was sleep in and made it look like night time."
-Fierce205
Don't Build A Bomb
"Being 18 and waking up to the FBI screaming and pointing guns in my face with bright lights and dragging me out of bed and getting cuffed and thrown into a van."
"Don't build a
"I dont do dumb shit anymore and I dont buy anything that would make them think im up to my old ways."anymore and I dont buy anything that would make them think im up to my old ways."
"I'm on the straight and narrow now and after all that the only job I could get was in the trucking industry and now I own 5 trucks and built a nice life and try my best to be a up standing member in my community."
-Sparkey_The_Great
Birth Scare
"Giving birth to my son, they put him on my chest for about 5 seconds then snatched him up and an entire team of medical types crowded around him working in complete silence. He wasn't breathing. I got to see him for all of 3 seconds, and only heard a couple of weak cries before they rushed him to the NICU."
"Two hours later they came up to tell us he was on a ventilator and not doing great, they suspected a heart defect and were going to helicopter him to the closest children's hospital (about 90 miles away). We did not get to see him for five hours and it was a couple days before we could hold him. I gave birth at midnight, so all of this was happening in the late late hours."
"A couple of relatively common issues had happened, both of which on their own need immediate attention but are not difficult to deal with, but the resolution of one caused serious problems because of the second. His heart is fine. He's a perfectly happy healthy preschooler now who is squirting bath water into the tub faucet and laughing hysterically."
-Yavemar
Parent's Worst Nightmare
"Woke up in the middle of the night to my smoke alarm and found my baby's crib on fire. Some people's literal worst nightmare (and mine now too)."
-Gubble_Buppie
"Is he okay?"
-Fierce205
"Aye. Thanks for asking. You can read my story here if you'd like."
-Gubble_Buppie
"Oh my goodness! I’m so thankful your son is ok now! I can’t even imagine what y’all went through."
-poppy_otter
Carnivals Are Supposed To Be Fun
"I was visiting some family in Edmonton years and years ago and they use to have this big fair full of rides and attractions. I wish I could remember the name sorry. All the rides were your standard carnival rides, the gravitron, tilt-a-whirl, log flume, etc. I had gone to many of these traveling fairs in my time and had a good time so thought nothing of it."
"After going on a few rides and having fun I decided to go on that ride that is the boat the goes back and forth before going all the way around. So at the beginning everything seemed fine."
"However at a certain point when going back the safety bar that was suppose to hold me in place just fell forward. It had not locked in and the ride was underway. The ride started heading the other way and the safety bar fell back on to me again. I pulled it as hard towards myself hoping to lock it into place."
"Yet when we started heading back the bar just flopped completely open again. I was sh*tting myself. I literally thought I was going to fall out of this ride and die. All those carnival horror stories were true I was fearing."
"I just wrapped my arms around the bar and held myself with my hands. If worst happened I would dangle from the bar I thought. Fortunately after a rocky ride it came to an end and I was safe with maybe only leaving my seat a few inches."
"I immediately ran to one of the workers after I got off and told them. The ride was shut down for 30 minutes after and I was done having fun for the night. The only other time I've been that scared since was the few times I've had sleep paralysis."
-MrSchop
Just A Bad (Or Good?) Year
"I have cheated death 3 times this year."
"2. At 2am a couple months ago carbon monoxide detectors go off in my moms house we start opening windows and calling the fire dept as we wait outside (w 2 dogs). The minute he opens the front door the detector starts going off like crazy. He said longer than 20 min we all could’ve died with the amount that was in the basement caused by a problem with the hot water tank."
"3. A large patio chair flying out of the back of a pickup truck which almost smashed my windshield had I not swerved just in time."
"An angel has my back and is watching out which I’m grateful for!!"
-IntelligentIsland167
Terrifying Tie
"Two are tied:"
"Being shot when our neighbor’s gun 'accidentally discharged' and the bullet came through the shared wall, severing an electrical line, barely missed my head, glanced off my chest, and landed on the other side of the room. The sheer thought of what could have been if I’d been laying an inch further left is terrifying."
"Gas pedal getting stuck while driving home from my mom’s funeral. I somehow managed to get the car pulled over and turned off, but I was going 85 mph+ going uphill. If it had got stuck three miles earlier, I’d have plunged off a seaside cliff, taking my aunt, cousin, and 9 month old daughter with me."
-Imaginary_Train_8056
Feels Like You're Dying
"Kidney stones. They were only about 1-2cm in size, but the pain they caused me was the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced. Doctors thought my appendix burst."
-Dear_Willingness_600
"God I think the worst thing about getting kidney stones for the first time, is that you never know what the f*ck it is. It’s literally one of the worst pains people can experience, and yet not knowing what it is just f*cks it up more."
-kcawks
Life can be truly terrifying, but not all of it is bad. The bad parts may stick out the most because of how human brains work, but the good parts are what helps get us through the bad.
People Break Down The Most F**ked Up Things Society Totally Accepted 20 Years Ago
The world has changed significantly in the last twenty years. Back in the day, you could just step out of the house and be gone all day and no one could contact you unless they were back home or used a payphone.
Nowadays, people expect us to be connected all the time, which is super frustrating in its own way. But it's hard to imagine the world as it was before, right? And it's pretty wild that we just accepted it for so long, that is until technology advanced enough!
Society has changed... for better or worse. People shared their observations after Redditor Silkhide asked the online community,
"What was the most f**ked up thing that was generally accepted twenty years ago?"
"I was knocked out cold..."
"No care or concern for concussions in sports. I was knocked out cold for two minutes on the football field, nobody told me, and when I came to we just resumed the game like nothing had happened."
"I didn’t even know I was out for those two minutes until a year later when people were telling football stories. I thought I had just gotten knocked down and got back up right away. I thought it was weird everyone was making such a big deal about it."
"My first ever depressive episode started almost immediately after that game."
ElbowStrike
Thankfully, knowledge about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is much more widespread.
"That Oxycontin..."
"That Oxycontin wasn’t habit forming and it was a miracle drug."
jm6398
Required reading: Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, in case you want to feel even more enraged about the ongoing opioid crisis.
"My high school..."
"My high school had an area that we were allowed to smoke. A designated smoking area for kids under 18."
Blitz-99
Ha! That would absolutely be met with shock and horror these days.
"Being at home..."
"Being at home at your TV at a certain time to catch a show, and expecting everyone to leave you alone so you could watch it with no interruptions."
"You could be out with friends and you'd look and say, "Oh, it's 7:30 I got to get home to catch my show!" And nobody looked at you like a strange social outcast."
prelegalalien
Ah, those were the days. The way we had to plan for all of these things, actually plan! Remember TVGuide?
"People dying..."
"People dying of Chronic Myloid Leukemia. 20 years ago it was 100% fatal in less than five years. Now it's treated with a once a day pill with no side effects for most people... miracle science right there."
Mandorrisem
Modern medicine is indeed amazing–and changes lives!
"Female celebrities..."
"Female celebrities and actresses with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. It's less prevalent now, but dang was it brutal back then."
spicedshrub
These Actors Were Perfectly Cast In Their Roles | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Sometimes an actor comes along that is able to reach the audience on a deeper level. The actor that immediately comes to mind is Robin Williams. Although it ...Karen Carpenter, anyone?
Talk about an emotionally devastating story.
"There's still a lot of trouble..."
"25 years ago, I had a gym teacher who did not think asthma was a thing and wouldn't let me have my inhaler at hand in class. I walked every mile because I didn't want to die."
"There's still a lot of trouble for the undiagnosed, but tons of physical and mental health issues that were downplayed or outright ignored at least have some kind of support system or protocol now. It's not perfect, but at least we know they're real and are starting to do something."
Pookajuice
A teacher who would have the nerve to mock a student for their disability or health problems today is in for a real wake-up call.
"Nobody said anything..."
"In middle school a student dressed up like an SS Nazi for halloween. Nobody said anything until my choir teacher told him that some people may find it offensive. Teacher was Jewish."
ExplicitTech
Yeah... that sounds like something that would warrant an immediate expulsion.
"I worked in restaurants back then..."
"Sexual harassment in the workplace. It was just starting to become a topic of conversation around the early 2000s but very little progress had been made."
"I worked in restaurants back then and the amount of harassment I and my other female coworkers endured was unreal by today’s standards. We all just learned to laugh it off because no one took it seriously."
dsw1219
Grateful to see the culture change for the better where this is concerned, though there is still so much work to be done.
"People would go to carnivals..."
"People would go in carnivals and shove their face in the same water barrel to grab an apple with their mouth. Completely bonkers in 2021."
iaml3roux
If COVID-19 had a Facebook, it would love, love, LOVE this.
For any of you reading... 2001 was 20 years ago. Take some pills for your back. It might hurt.
Have some observations of your own? Feel free to tell us more in the comments below!
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Doctors Break Down Which Patients' Self-Diagnosis Was Actually Correct
We consult medical experts when we don't feel well because we assume they have all the answers.
And let's face it, going down the Google rabbit hole for self-diagnosis only exacerbates our anxiety.
But are doctors always right?
Sometimes, a person's gut instinct about an ailment can be accurate and being told otherwise can be fatal.
Wondering how often patients saved their own lives, Redditor OutsideXtraGuard asked:
"Doctors and nurses of Reddit: What self-diagnosis of a patient suprisingly turned out to be right?"
Medical experts – as well as former patients – shared their experiences involving a variety of cases.
Common anecdotes involved people who knew they had a progressive disease and wound up having various stages of cancer after previously being told they were fine.
So if you ever notice a strange lump behind your ear that appears to be the source of excruciating pain and are told it is nothing life-threatening, you may want to insist on a thorough examination.
What do you have to lose? Exactly.
The Suspicious Mole
"A man came in, saying he had an aggressive cancer on his back. He also told us that he'd run no tests, so we were skeptic, tbh. When we ran the test, though, we saw he was right. Seriously."
They Know When It's Time
"My mom is a nurse supervisor at a nursing home. Multiple times, patients have walked up to her and said goodbye, that they're going to die that night. Even though these residents have been perfectly mobile and "with it" they have always been right."
It Wasn't "Heartburn"
"My grandfather never went to doctors. He wanted to go out the way he came in--no drugs and surgery and machines. He got chest pain and decided to see a doctor, so right there, it's clear that it was unusual. The doctor dismissed it as heartburn (because hey, what else could it possibly be in an elderly man who's hardly ever seen a doctor and has chest pain? /s ). A couple of days later, he died of a massive stroke. My grandmother wanted to sue or something, but everyone was like eh, it's not going to bring him back, and he went out the way he wanted to, anyway."
"Seriously, a 70+-year-old man with chest pain? My father's had two weird "episodes" and got sent to the ER both times. Neither turned out to be "anything" on tests, but normally, people don't fuck around with that. "Chest pain" is a magic phrase, usually."
– macphile
The Lump
"My sister had a lump behind her ear that was causing her pain and was growing. My mom used to be a nurse and she thought it didn't look right, it wasn't just a cyst so she kept monitoring it and started to become worried that it might be cancerous. For a whole year my mom went back and forth with doctors asking them to take her seriously and one doctor finally agreed to go in and biopsy it. Lo and behold my sister had stage 1 cancer, and it was a rare form at that."
You're Never "Too Young" For It
"Not a doc or a nurse but back in the early 80s my mum (30 at the time) could not convince several docs that she had breast cancer. It was different to just a lump or pain. They all responded with 'you're too young.' Finally got one doc to write a referral to a specialist so she would shut up about it. She had breast cancer. Was told she may need a mastectomy but after going in they were able to remove enough without having to go that far."
"She went back to the original doc and had a go at him and said if she ever heard his name come up for malpractice in the future she would make a statement against him (she was in medical industry). Told him to NEVER tell a woman she was too young for breast cancer."
– J_Side
"Oh Look ... It WAS A Kidney Stone"
"Not a doc or nurse but a patient. I was having a kidney stone and my BF at the time took me to the ER. The nurse kept asking me what I did to myself (because I was practically screaming in pain). Through tears I managed to get out 'it's a kidney stone.' I then sat in the waiting room practically passing out until my BF somewhat yelled at the ER staff. They came over to get me and I couldn't even walk, the nurse said 'well are you coming back.' My BF said get her a f'king wheelchair."
"6 hours and a round of morphine later I passed the stone. The nurse said 'oh look at that it WAS a kidney stone.' Like seriously wtf."
A Collapsed Lung
"I had a spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung) that came out of nowhere when I was 17. Had to go to the hospital and get a tube hooked up to my thoracic cavity to reinflate my lung."
"A week later I was in statistics class and I felt my other lung collapse. I immediately knew what it was. Kind of a weird but very distinct feeling of pain and shortness of breath. Cut to me in the school nurses office trying to explain that I had a spontaneous pneumothorax and I need to go to the hospital. Yeah...she didn't believe me at first."
– gavilin
Shingles Doesn't Discriminate
"Not the doctor but I went in because I had shingles. Told them upfront I thought it was shingles. The doctor kind of chuckles and she says, 'Well, you are far too young to have shingles. It's impossible.'"
"So I lifted my shirt and showed her my side where it was and I instantly saw her eyes widen as she goes, 'Oh my, that is definitely shingles...'"
"The doctor and nurses were a little sheepish and apologetic but they did a great job helping me get better. I was the youngest case they'd ever seen (early 20s at the time)."
– Tokzillu
The Voices In Her Head
"I read about a woman who had a voice in her head that kept telling her that she had a brain tumor. She eventually got tested and it turned out that she did have a tumor and it was causing the auditory hallucinations."
Don't Dismiss Everything You Hear
"I work as a caseworker for adults with severe and debilitating mental illness. A team member had a client keep complaining that she had 'worms in my brain.' All her doctors would dismiss her because of her mental illness. My team member finally got her doctor to refer her for an fMRI. Turned out she had terminal, inoperable brain tumors.... It's unclear whether or not her death could've been prevented if she had received treatment at the onset of whatever symptoms she was experiencing that she was unable to describe."
"Often people with mental illness, particularly schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder, will describe ailments in bizarre ways. It could be worms in their brain, possession, bugs in their stomach, etc. It's important to acknowledge that they may have a very real problem they are unable to verbalize, and we must not dismiss them."
Another Close Call
"My mom went to the doctors complaint about a pain in her lower back by her kidney. The doctor did a quick check up and told her it was nothing that she was probably just sleeping wrong."
"My mom mentioned cancer and the doctor said that it wasn't very likely because people with kidney cancer dont usually feel anything. She was adamant that something was wrong so she went to another doctor that told her the same thing but said he would run some tests to show her that it wasn't cancer."
"When the results came back from the test, it turned out she did in fact have cancer on one of her kidneys and because she caught at such an early stage, they were able to remove it before it spread."
– jakeO_23
Bleeding Brain Ignored
"Long time ago a patient of mine in the mental health unit had a delusion that he had a bleed in his brain. Kept on it for a month. One night he actually did have a massive spontaneous intracerebral bleed. Poor guy died after that."
Ocular Shingles
"Patient in a care home was complaining of eye pain and facial tightness. She told me it was shingles."
"I reported it to the physician and supported that it did look like shingles. Doctor did not believe me or the patient. Poor lady suffered for several days until the night staff sent to the hospital. Guess what? Occular Shingles."
Disc Herniation
"Patient here; got into a car wreck and right arm started going numb a few weeks later. Self diagnosed as disc pressing on spinal cord, requested they do an MRI, doc said to take more painkillers and it would go away, I don't like drugs so I insisted. Footed bill for MRI that insurance wouldn't cover because I requested it against doctors wishes. Bulging disc on C5/6. 7 months of PT and other non painkiller drugs arm works again."
"F'k insurance, f'k doctors that push painkillers. Nearly done with the debt hole that entire debacle put me into."
– eWaffle
Unexpected Brain Surgery
"'Not a doctor but' I started having severe excruciating headaches come on when standing, or coughing, laughing, etc. They became so severe they'd make me scream and vomit, but would disappear as long as I was bent over and hanging my head or if I took crazy amounts of caffeine. Because the headaches were positional I thought it was a CSF leak and that I needed a blood patch. One morning my husband drove me to the ER, which triggered a headache so I walked into the ER bent with my head hanging and saying I had a CSF leak and needed a blood patch. They did an MRI and it turned out leaks from Chiari, so I was right about the leaks but wrong about the treatment and I got brain surgery instead."
Mother Knows Best
"My dad is a neurosurgeon and my mom thought I was having absence seizures (I basically zone out and forget what happened from the past ten minutes or so) and my dad said I was just ignoring my mom, my mom took me to go get a EEG and turns out I have seizures pretty strong ones. EEGs can take up to two to three hours long and mine was fifteen minutes. We walked to my dads hospital and my mom walked in flaunting the papers saying 'I knew it!! I'm smarter than the neurosurgeon!!' Haha 😂"
"Edit: I just remembered something when I had my seizures(I was on meds and now I'm off, we are waiting to see if they'll come back), I had to have someone check on me every few minutes to make sure I hadn't drowned. I couldn't drive(still can't) or swim or hardly do anything by myself. Makes you appreciate alone time lol"
– zhuzhu03
13-Year-Old Girl Raises Nearly $400k To Help Her Friend Get Life-Saving Cancer Treatment—In Just One Week
A delighted teen celebrated as a fundraising page she set up for life-saving cancer treatment for her best friend smashed its £300,000 (~$390,000) target - in just one week.
Lillie Cotgrove, 13, was "devastated" when her best pal Lily Wythe, 14, was diagnosed four months ago with the deadliest type of childhood cancer.
The survival prognosis for Lily's condition - a high-grade diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) - is just eight to 12 months.
Wythe family / SWNS
So when Lily's parents found "promising" clinical trials for her cancerous brain tumor in Seattle, Lillie was determined to do what she could to help her friend.
Schoolgirl Lillie squealed with delight as her fundraising page, The One Pound Warriors, reached its £300,000 target - just a week after she created it on Facebook.
Paul Davey / SWNS
The One Pound Warriors - which asks for a voluntary £1 donation from all its members - has received a host of celebrity endorsements including Jonathan Ross, Rachel Riley, and Gemma Collins.
The Facebook page was set up by Lillie and her mum Sarah last Thursday (January 16), and its 134,000 members have helped to raise £230,000 (~$300,000) in just seven days.
This total was added to £78,000 (~$100,000) raised by a separate GoFundMe page, which was set up nine weeks ago in November 2019.
And when Lillie was told that her fundraising page had reached its target, she squealed with excitement, before hugging dad Mark and becoming visibly emotional.
Paul Davey / SWNS
Speaking from her home in Benfleet, Essex, England, Lillie said:
"It's absolutely incredible what's been achieved. I did this because I really wanted to help Lily, and at the start I felt a bit like I couldn't help her."
"But then I set up the Facebook page, and lots of people started helping, and now, we're going to get Lily to the U.S. to get a clinical trial done," she added.
And her proud dad Mark, beaming at his daughter's achievement, said:
"It's just incredible, really. I couldn't be prouder of my daughter.
"All of this was borne out of the helplessness of the situation, and wanting to help her dear friend - and look what's been achieved. She's going to get out there to Seattle. It's amazing."
Wythe family / SWNS
Lillie also added her thanks to national charity Brain Tumor Research, who have helped the two girls spread the word about The One Pound Warriors.
"Brain Tumor Research has helped us so much," said Lillie.
And Lily's emotional mom Diana Wythe said:
"Lily and I never imagined we would manage to raise the £300,000, or that it would happen so quickly. Lily is blown away by it all."
"We can't believe there are so many people out there who have been touched by Lily, with people giving away precious savings or even their wages and children their pocket money."
"I want people to rest assured that any donations not needed for Lily, will be given to charity. We aren't making any money out of this."
Diana added:
"Lily had a scan on Sunday and we will get the results next week, which can then be sent to Seattle Children's Hospital to find out what the next move is. This has happened so quickly, we haven't even had the chance to get our visas ready, so that needs to happen fast."
Paul Davey / SWNS
Lillie's fundraising efforts for her friend have touched people's hearts around the world, with many members of The One Pound Warriors nominating her for a Pride of Britain Award.
The parents of both teenagers have been overwhelmed by the "phenomenal" response, which has included retweets and messages from British celebrities including Jonathan Ross, Gemma Collins, and Keith Lemon.
Jonathan Ross shared the fundraising page on Saturday to his five million Twitter followers, writing:
"If any of you feel like joining me in chipping in I know it would be appreciated."
Wythe family / SWNS
And Gemma Collins shared the page on Sunday to her 1.3 million followers, writing:
"Have a read, share and donate if you can."
Hugh Adams, head of stakeholder relations at Brain Tumor Research, said:
"This is the most extraordinary achievement. Huge congratulations to Lillie and everyone who has got involved with The One Pound Warriors."
"Our hearts go out to the family of Lily Wythe as they start preparing for further treatment which they had been told by doctors in the UK wasn't possible. It is just not acceptable that families who have loved ones affected by brain tumors are sent home and told to make memories."
"On behalf of us all at Brain Tumor Research, I would like to wish Lily and her family all the very best," he added.
Paul Davey / SWNS