In the end, I think the one thing that COVID will teach us, is how much more about staying healthy we need to know.
Gotta Go
poop GIFGiphy"Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Crohn's, Colitis, etc). People hear bowel and think 'Oh, that's just that pooping illness' but internal bleeding, intestinal obstructions, massive amounts of pain, ulcers... it's not an easy ride even for mild cases."
sticks1218
Clusters
"Migraines and cluster headaches. We might look okay on the outside, but it's completely debilitating. I lose a lot of my life to head pain, as I mainly work and lay in bed. I have lost touch with a lot of friends and family members due to last-minute cancelation plans. Some days, it's so bad I want to drill a hole in my head to release the pain. Clusters are worse."
"This is why I'm not a gun owner. It really sucks with this condition; it's really not considered a disability. So I have to force myself to work to live, but forcing it makes it worse, so quality of life really sucks. I have to warn new coworkers that if I start slurring, talking funny, or can't find words, that I'm not drunk and not having a stoke."
"I know there's tons of horrible diseases out there, so I try to tell myself it could be worse. It also really sucks when someone tells you to suck it up because it's just a headache. Ok, sorry, rant over."
turtle-girl420
People stop breathing...
"Asthma. People stop breathing. Tv and movies like to show it as a way of identifying a weakling, but it is a serious, deadly disease. It is also super not fun. Until my mid-20s I was hospitalized at least 2x a year because my emergency inhaler wasn't enough to make me start breathing again. I bought my own nebulizer, and it is the only reason I haven't been hospitalized since."
AtheneSchmidt
It's REAL!!
"The jokes about it never being lupus. It's surprisingly common and can be incredibly disabling."
mimacat
Exactly! 'In fact it’s frequently lupus!'”
"Where I live they have the annual lupus walk fundraiser outside in summer at freaking noon. I mean, if the leukemia and lymphoma society can do theirs at night surely the lupus folks can too! We aren’t supposed to be in the sun you nimrods! Thank you for coming to my TED talk."
"PS: I’m allergic to most sunscreen. It’s awesome."
Faeidal
Bad Moves
Sad A Christmas Story GIF by filmeditorGiphy"Parkinson's. It is a whole lot more than just shaky hands."
electrishian
"Dementia via a movement disorder - it's awful. Almost one of the grimmest things I can think of."
humanhedgehog
Migraines already freak me out. And anything bowel involved gets worse with age. I knew it.
Blurred Lines
"Usher’s Syndrome. It’s a syndrome that affects vision, hearing and balance. I’m a sufferer and I was born deaf, my vision is degrading, and I inherited it from my mother who has severe tunnel vision and a blurry vision in one of her eyes. People often refuse to believe that I’ll be blind later in life. They also refuse to believe my mother is registered blind since blah blah she still can see. It’s an awful syndrome, and limits me from certain activities."
owentattoosdrugz
The Lotion Life
"Eczema is awful. I’ve struggled with it my entire life and it can be rough! I hate it when I get a bad flair up, especially somewhere very noticeable like my face, and everyone and their mother has to comment on it/offer their insane remedy and ask 'have you tried putting lotion on it?!' It gets really hard to be polite after so many comments like that. Eczema SUCKS."
anniepoonannie1988
Flappy Bird
"Type 1 diabetes. I generally down play it to 'I can just take insulin and can eat whatever I want' because it's easier than explaining I'll be playing a game of Flappy Bird the rest of my life where if I get the dosage wrong I can die immediately and without warning, where if I don't have insulin for 3 days I die a horrible painful death, and if I ignore it I can go blind and lose the ability to digest food. And all the freaking beeping devices, all day every day. It's beeping at me right now. Oh, and insulin costs $600 a month, so that's cool."
CrackSammiches
Brutal Effects
"All the autoimmune diseases. The amount of pain suffered is incomprehensible. The medications can be brutal with side effects, and can cause other issues. The impact on families and the mental health of the patients is almost always negative. Most of the diseases are degenerative, and there is no cure for any of them."
mykidsarecrazy
“what are you deaf?”
deaf american sign language GIF by Nyle DiMarcoGiphy"Deaf/HOH backstory: both sides of my family have back hearing backgrounds. My father is deaf and my mom's side just has bad hearing in general. I had good hearing most my like until I was about 14ish. Discovered I have progressive hearing loss and I’ll eventually go completely deaf."
"It just sucks cause It’s so hard to communicate and do most things like a normal person and most people don’t understand that. For example when I ask someone to repeat myself and they say “'what are you deaf?' Yeah I f**king am."
Proper-Type7899
In the Head
"Migraines."
"Edit: I have a combination of vestibular and vascular migraines. Since pain, dizziness, visual aura, photophobia and phonophobia are not visible symptoms, others who have never experienced migraines will never be able to understand why it's to be taken seriously. People have to understand that a migraine can also be a symptom of something worse."
sweettooth_92
Horrible
"Shingles."
Back2Bach
"It can infect your eye and cause blindness. It can cause such severe pain and debility, you require long term nursing care (nursing home). Shingles are horrible."
Secret_Choice7764
"My fiancé's grandmother had it near her eye and it spread to her brain and she died. Awful illness."
Alone-Blueberry
"get stomachaches sometimes"
"GERD. Can't count the number of people who say I just 'get stomachaches sometimes' or 'everyone gets heartburn.' I have esophageal scarring and have a restricted diet just so I don't spend days in agony because I decided to drink a sprite. I had a feeding tube attached to my stomach for years because I couldn't swallow and everything irritated my esophagus."
"My concerns weren't taken seriously by doctors and I spent two weeks in a hospital struggling to convince them I wasn't anorexic. Even my voice is affected, I sound raspy to various degrees all the time."
PeculiarInsomniac
Snooze
seth meyers lol GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphy"As a narcoleptic: people tend to think it's funny/quirky that I will fall asleep randomly but get all serious when I'm suddenly lying asleep in the middle of a crossroad."
evoli21
Bodily Functions
"Hypothyroidism. People think it just makes you fat, but if your thyroid stops working it can wreck your life. So many bodily functions are controlled by your thyroid. Every weird symptom I had for years can be explained by my thyroid going out, from years long exhaustion to depression to my hair falling out to muscle aches to anemia to shortness of breath to brain fog to intermittent double vision. There are more. Those are just the most prominent ones for me."
PetLemur
under research...
"PCOS. Horribly unpredictable and often painful menstrual cycles, chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression. Keeping to a specific diet works for a week or so and then all of a sudden doesn’t. It’s also horribly under researched so the only guidance from doctors I’ve ever received is 'usually we tell PCOS patients to lose weight but you don’t have weight to lose so idk.'"
megpal426
Adapt Correctly
"Hashimoto‘s or any thyroid disease. The thyroid essentially controls your entire metabolism. The dosage of medication needs to be adapted throughout your life (especially in the beginning it‘s weekly blood tests). And if the dosage is wrong you can have all sorts of lovely symptoms including but not limited to:"
"Not being able to focus, brain fog, being extremely tired/exhausted, weight gain/loss, hair loss, shaking, digestive issues, menstrual cycle issues, etc."
little_mealmaid
Miserable
"How about OCD. People think it just makes them quirky and particular. I've seen it where people end up harming themselves, and can't function in society. Or how about carpel tunnel? It can make your life miserable, but people just make fun of it for whacking off too much."
ooo-ooo-oooyea
restless
assist jimmy fallon GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonGiphy"Restless Legs Syndrome. Yes it is real, and yes it disrupts one's life, especially the ability to sleep. Lack of sleep then leads to a whole host of other conditions."
Mymoggievan
something more...
"Snoring!!!"
lostinrandomworld
"Often a sign of something more serious, like apnea, which can impair cognitive function, cause weight gain, and trim years off your life."
BudgetHero
"If you snore, you may also quit breathing for seconds at a time. Get a sleep study. Sleep apnea causes problems with the cardiovascular system, neurological system, etc. Snoring seems annoying and sometimes funny, but it's not."
711spaceace
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There are just somethings insurance doesn't cover, and it really shouldn't. I mean if you're gonna run around shoving things in all sorts of places or swallowing anything off the streets then that really should be out of pocket. Make you think twice.
For Beauty
Botox GIF by memecandyGiphy"Cement. I work in derma and had a couple of women come with cement injected in their face and didn't know why they couldn't feel their face/ do certain facial expressions. And yes, they wanted a discount dermatologist so they went to Mexico."
On the Cheek
"Neurosurgeon here. Guy came into the hospital with 3 days of headache out of nowhere. Head CT showed a large nail through the anterior skull base (think above the nose, between the forehead). When asked about it he had been using a pneumatic nail gun a couple days before. He remembered a moment when he didn't brace the gun right and it rebounded, hitting him in the face."
"It must have fired a nail when the end hit him in the face and he didn't realize it. He indeed did have a small wound in his cheek that fit with the story. Luckily the nail avoided the large blood vessels and other critical structures in the brain. We had to take him to surgery in order to pull it out. Cutting it out of his brain was weird."
T.M.I
"My dad used to work at a psych ward and a severely schizophrenic man got ahold of a pen and jammed it down his urethra. No one realized until the thing had calcified and he was going into organ failure. My dad doesn't know what happened to him, but I'm sure that must have been one gruesome surgery."
Dr. Psycho
"Obligatory not a surgeon but I read a news article about a surgeon who found someone's initials cauterized into a patients organ. Turns out it was a surgeon who had done a previous surgery and felt the need to leave his mark on a patient. I believe he lost his medical license over it."
Down the Hatch!
Pop Tv Eating GIF by Big Brother After DarkGiphy"Guy had put a cucumber down his throat and it broke off so he couldn't pull it back out. He came in with his wife."
I love cucumbers. Now I may have to avoid them altogether. Although I eat mine in pieces in a salad. I'm a novice I guess. And cauterizing patients? Now that is a Dateline NBC episode we need.
Cough it Up!
Cat Movie GIF by The Secret Life Of PetsGiphy"Bezoar (giant hair ball) in the exact shape of a stomach. Turns out, she worked at a hair salon and was eating OTHER PEOPLE'S HAIR!"
Snooker
"Dentist. We had 2 men come in to reception, one of whom had a snooker ball in his mouth. The man who didn't explained that they'd been at the snooker club down the road and his friend bet someone £50 that he could fit a snooker ball in his mouth. He won the bet then found he couldn't get it out. We had to sedate him and dislocate his jaw to remove it."
Lucky Fool
"Surgeon here. Trauma patient with who fell on steel rebar and it went in one side of the chest and out the other side long ways. Somehow missed his heart, esophagus, major arteries. We removed it with no critical injuries."
"I saw a show where they tested something like that - a guy had slipped and fell on a plant stake that went from the bottom right ribcage, up through the chest and out the left side of his neck."
"I think he even walked into the ER like that, and there was surprisingly little trauma for what looked absolutely horrible."
"The show came to the conclusion that his saving grace was that the stake was dull/not sharp, so it kinda pushed past everything critical without serious damage. Their experiment with a sharpened stake was much more lethal. Definitely one lucky guy."
A+E...
"I used to work in medical sales and one A+E Dr I visited had an 8 ball on his desk (it had a little stand and a glass case). I had to ask - thinking it was a pool competition trophy. It wasn't a pool competition trophy."
- ozzieowl
Don't Tell Me
"My mother in law used to be a scrub nurse and she told us a story about a patient they had in the OR who purposely cut up little bits of a metal coat hanger and barbed them so they couldn't be removed, then proceeded to shove them up his urethra. I can't remember the actual medical term for it but he was one of those people who had a mental health issue and wanted surgeries done so he would constantly do terrible things to himself because they would have to surgically correct them."
Tea or table?
spoon GIFGiphy"Not a surgeon. Knew someone who ate spoons. Just swallowed them and had surgery to remove them repeatedly. Batteries too."
Spoons, batteries and hair? Now I've heard it all. And it's more than I needed to know!
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100% Coherent
GiphyI woke up during a colonoscopy once. I remember looking up at the screen and trying to talk to the doctor/nurses. Went back under after a few moments. In my mind, I was 100% coherent. But they said, "Yeah, you did wake up briefly and you started mumbling something but we couldn't understand you." Weird to think of 2 completely different perspectives of the same situation.
-mindaq
The Gall of it All....
Had my gallbladder removed 4 years ago.
I slightly remember waking up during the procedure, but the light was too bright for me to properly see anything, so I went back to sleep.
I find it hilarious because I don't remember how I went to sleep after they put me under with anaesthesia.
-LeggoMahLegolas
When I was 4.
I woke up when I was 4 and having my tonsils removed. It's one of those really clear but blurry memories I have from my childhood. I saw the surgeon and SCREAMED (iirc nothing had really happened yet I was just scared)
My mother was being prepped for the same surgery on a different FLOOR and heard me and freaked out. They had to show her I was okay and I just woke up for a sec and then they were able to do hers.
-Jelluy
KO-ed!
I woke up in the middle of a colonoscopy. I remember deliberately trying to stay awake as the anesthetic started to KO me, which is probably unrelated but was a funny coincidence. I was only awake for a few seconds, made some gurgling noises and saw my guts on a screen.
-SadCicada
Ouch.
GiphyPain.
I had surgery for a deviated septum. I woke up as they were finishing up.
Apparently it's not uncommon for younger kids.
-BKStephens
Waking up late....
I don't know if it counts but when I was a child I had surgery on my leg. After anesthesia I was giggling like mad at everything, then I fell asleep.
I woke up not much later, tried to mumble but couldn't really move. I remember being really irritated because I kept feeling stabbing pains in my leg. It hurt but it was a weird, distant pain. To put it in perspective I was also irritated by the bright light in my face, and probably would have put them on the same level of annoyance.
I tried to listen to what the surgeons and nurses were saying, but couldn't process anything, so I just gave up and went back to sleep.
I said I don't know if it really counts because I don't know how far into the surgery I was. I couldn't see anything so they could have already sawed my bone, or they could have just been drawing on me with a marker. I think I was asleep before that point, but I also could have been awake but forgetting to hit record in my brain.
-nooseknight23
A POV Scene....
Probably not the response you're looking for but, I had an Cardiac Ablation almost 10 years ago. It's a simple procedure and I wasn't fully put under. But after the actual procedure, they eject you with adrenaline to see how your heart reacts. And MAN! That was an experience. I remember coming to and being very unnerved.
The nurse to my right leaned over and put her hand on my chest and said so calmly "This is all normal. You're doing great." But man, I thought I was dying. It was like a POV scene from a video game cutscene. Everything inside of me felt tense and I couldn't move. After that I think I passed out again and then came to when they were wheeling me out. Man, that was a trippy day.
-Magnus4
Floating....
At first I was panicking slightly because only my brain was turned on. I felt nothing- like My brain was floating, or disconnected from my body. I remember thinking "oh, this is what it's like when you die. Not as bad as I thought." But then through the panic and noise my mind was making, I heard the Dr's voice and the heart rate monitor beeping normally- that's when I realized they were still working on me.
The worst part is when they came to wake me up- keep in mind I was conscious but zero control over my body. The nurse kept nudging me next to my incision site- at first lightly and then aggressively like pushing/rubbing my stomach to get me to wake up. It HURT, but I still had no control over my limbs and had to force myself to just moan to let her know I was awake and to stop.
That was my 7th and last surgery- although health issues remain, I refuse to go under the knife again.
-JumzSqueeze
#TooWoke!
I was around the age of 12 when I went under my surgery for my Wolff Parkison White Syndrome
I have went under and been told, I have *woken up* by random chance during my surgery, I was barely able to see anything in front of me, but moments later, I looked around and someone shouted.
"His Heart just stopped, quickly we need to bring him back." But in my mind, I thought it was just my head playing jokes, but few mins later, I felt a intense jolt of electricity hit my body and my mind instantly snapped my reality into my current view, and I seem to have full control, but few moments later, around 3 nurses held me down and one just grabbed a needle, probably full of anesthesia, and injected it in me quickly and thoroughly as possible.
It turns out after I came out, they told me I was pronounced dead for aprox. of 10 ~ 15 mins on the table but I seem to have just jolted myself back alive, unsure of what happened, but overall I made it out alive, currently 25 and living a healthy life, just have forbidden knowledge that I died and came back due to sheer luck.
I can tell you the rest of my story from my surgery on a later post, for now, it's just what happened to me. Will reply to any questions of my survival.
-CannedCuriousity
Not Pleasant.
GiphyNot so much woken up, but locals don't work on me, they wear off really quickly.
My vasectomy was an interesting experience. I felt the doctor cut righty loose, and the cauterisation was less than pleasant.
-PM_ME_BEEF_CURTAINS