People Share The Craziest Medical Conditions They've Ever Heard Of
A Redditor asked: 'What is the craziest medical condition you've ever heard of?'
There are some wild medical conditions out there, and sometimes, I feel like we're never done learning about them.
It was just a few years ago that my brother told me about Cotard's delusion, a rare psychological disorder in which the person afflicted believes they are dead, immortal, or don't exist.
I didn't even believe him at first, but when I looked it up, it turned out to be a real thing (and I even based an entire short story around it).
A lot of crazy medical conditions sound like they are not real, but it turns out, they are. Redditors know this all too well and are ready to share the craziest medical conditions they've ever heard of.
It all started when Redditor TweekerAllWeeker asked:
"What is the craziest medical condition you've ever heard of?"
Frozen
"Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is a rare muskuloskeletal condition where, after birth and progressively through life, muscles and tendons are gradually transformed into bone (a process called ossification). This creates a second “skeleton” of extra bone, which makes movement impossible."
– yParticle
"Idk if it's real, but I heard people with FOP have to chose, at some point, the position they want to spend the rest of their life in, standing sitting or laying down."
– aoi4eg
"I saw a show about this when I was a kid and the whole idea still f**ks with me."
– Jaway66
You Thinking What I'm Thinking?
"There are conjoined twins (the Hogan sisters) who are attached at the head and their brains are attached. Each one can see through her sister's eyes. Each one can taste the food the other one is eating."
– Fun_in_Space
Fragility
"I met a guy who practically had eggshells for bones. He broke them about 50 times or so doing simple things like just sitting on a couch or brushing his teeth."
– Odd-Package-4713
"That'd be osteogenesis imperfecta type 3."
– crimpytoses
"My nephew has osteogenesis imperfecta and is almost 8yrs old. CPS got involved when he was a baby and hadn’t been diagnosed yet, thinking there was abuse, which was so sad for my family. They later found out what it was and have made medical accommodations. Man, he’s such a sweet, happy boy despite his condition. He hasn’t known anything other than this his entire life, so for him pain is normal (which makes me so sad), but he is bright, engaging, and so very amazing in every way that I get pissed the f**k off that he’s dealing with this."
– Purse_Whiskey
Life Span
"That disease that ages people at an insane rate that often kills it’s sufferers before they turn 16. I think it’s called progeria."
– MascotGuy2077
"That is a wild one, also the girl that looks 8 but is in her 20's, it's crazy as f**k."
– IThinkMyLegsAreBroke
"At my old place, two of the kids in the community had progeria. I'd only ever see them once a week at most, but they always seemed happy when I came across them; their family made a real effort to make their time count. I've always wondered how they grapple with the reality of their situation at their young age, though. How do you even bring that kind of subject up as a parent?"
– miniman03
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
"The Capgras delusion: the person becomes inalterably convinced that someone close to them has been replaced by an imposter who has disguised him/herself so cleverly that they look identical to the replaced person."
""Yes, this woman looks and acts just like my wife and knows everything my wife would know. ...But she is an imposter disguised to fool me and I will have nothing to do with her.""
"It's funny to think about in some ways but would be absolutely terrifying to have."
– dr3rdeye
Facial Blindness
"This reminds me of a condition where people lose the ability to see faces. Their eyes work, they can see anything, but if it is or resembles a human face it gets turned in an undeterminable blur."
– random_sh*tter
"Faceblind. I have this. Brad Pitt has this. The worst part is when I wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, think "oh that's what I look like," then promptly forget my face 5 seconds later. I cannot point myself out in family photos."
– GodsCasino
"Prosopagnosia. It comes in varying degrees of severity. I have it. I have a lot of trouble recognizing people in unfamiliar contexts, like seeing your teacher at the grocery store. I have to see somebody a lot of times before I can recognize their face, unless they have some distinguishing feature (like my friend with a long beard). My friends tend to be people who look or dress distinctively, because it’s so much easier for me to recognize them."
– linuxgeekmama
Cut It Off!
"Body integrity disphoria: people who desperately want to cut off a part of their body, a limb for instance. They have always been thought of as insane until someone decided to have a look at their brains and realised that the limb in question isn't registering in their brain. To them, it feels like an alien appendage was sewn to their body. I find that so fascinating."
– Deleted User
Is It Still There?
"Or the other way around, phantom limb syndrome. When one loses their limb but still feels itchiness or pain on that non-existent limb. They use mirror therapy which is quite interesting as well."
– trickydaze
Strange Immunity
"Knew a woman who couldn’t conceive with her husband."
"He could theoretically get another woman pregnant, and she could theoretically get pregnant from another man, they just couldn’t conceive together."
"He donated blood (maybe marrow) to her while she was being treated for cancer. This somehow made her body immune to his sperm."
"They wound up adopting a couple of kids."
– ShaolinDave79
Anti-Hydration
"Allergy to water. It's extremely rare, last I researched it I believe there were less than 10 documented cases. And yes, they are allergic to themselves. They can't drink straight water, typical hygiene is a huge no go, and even humidity can trigger bad reactions."
– KaliCalamity
"How do these poor people live…"
– Crackheadwithabrain
"Not well, and on a lot of antihistamines"
– KaliCalamity
"I knew one of those kids who has the disorder. His twin brother was diabetic, and I didn't believe him, but his parents confirmed it. His skin was constantly cracked and sloughing off. Poor kid. I felt so bad for him."
– arcticnerd
"How do they stay.... Hydrated? Do they have to drink insanely alkaline water? What about their blood? Like wtaf???"
– Grouchy-Place7327
"They can have small amounts of water, but at least in the documentary I saw, the couple of people it focused on usually stuck to things like juices and milk, as they're less reactive. The major danger is skin contact."
– KaliCalamity
Seeing Things
"My nephew had PFAPA (periodic fever, aphthous stomatitis, pharyngitis, adenitis). Basically he would get a very high fever every 3-4 weeks with no other symptoms other than the fever alone. One night when he was maybe 5 years old, he was going through an episode and called his mom (my sister) into his room. He told her that he was really scared because his bedroom was covered in bees. I guess the hallucinations aren’t always fun."
"He had his tonsils and adenoids removed and that was the cure!"
– emjayholla
A Whole Different Perspective
"Synesthesia. A condition where your brain mixes up sensory signals."
"With this condition, one might be able to taste words, or certain numbers will always appear a specific color, or you might literally see music or smell something and feel as though you're being touched."
– ChaoTiKPranXter
"I can hear color. Sounds have different colors to me. This is especially true of people’s voices. Barbra Streisand, for example, has a light amber voice."
– IoSonCalaf
"I have that! For a while I thought everyone did."
– RenegadeRabbit
It's surprising how many of these I've actually heard of (thanks to Grey's Anatomy) but that last one is completely new!
People Explain How They Would Have Died Without Modern Medicine
Reddit user Inhalegoodshat asked: 'If it wasn't for modern medicine what killed you?'
While there is still a lot that we don't know, like how to cure cancer and other illnesses, it's undeniable that modern medicine has come a long way.
So much so, there are many illnesses people get today that likely would have killed them without modern medical attention, antibiotics, and perhaps even surgery.
Redditor Inhalegoods**t asked:
"If it wasn't for modern medicine, what [would have] killed you?"
Chest Colds
"Pneumonia and Bronchitis."
- Coveinant
"Me too at five years old. I was hospitalized for days."
- Misspuddintane
Premature Birth
"I was born eight weeks early in 1973. I weighed three pounds. I'm lucky to be here."
- doggofurever
Anaphylaxis with Milk
"Milk…"
"I was born with something nobody really knows about because it’s really rare. It’s called Galactosemia, and it’s basically like being lactose intolerant, but it’s worse."
"If I had milk, I could die. When I was born, they didn’t know I had it, so my mom gave me milk just like a normal baby, and I threw up and started to become unconscious."
"My mom did CPR on me three times, and I spent weeks in the hospital as a newborn just to recover from a single sip of milk."
- bubbling_b***h
Guillian Barre Syndrome
"Guillian Barre Syndrome."
"My immune system turned against my nervous system. Think of your nerves as wires; mine got stripped of the myelin, which is like the insulation."
"Six weeks in the hospital and four years later, walking is difficult with zero feeling in my feet."
"My doctors and people I’ve talked to say they are mostly better after a couple of weeks. I spent that much time just having a nurse clean my bedpan."
- axendo
Early-Onset Diabetes
"Diabetic coma at the age of seven."
- 011_0108_180
"That’s how my son would’ve gone at the age of three… but don’t worry, we’ve been 10 years from a cure for almost 50 years…"
- UnicornGlitterZombie
Wisdom Tooth Troubles
"My wisdom tooth came in, got infected, and the infection was spreading towards my brain."
- ParsnipRude8503
"It's actually really amazing that your teeth and gums can affect both your brain and heart. I'm 23 and only recently learned this."
- Kingpinfanatic
HIV
"HIV."
- Ginshed
"Ufffff, this."
- Kaste90
"I've told my son that when I was his age, getting AIDS literally meant that you were going to die soon."
"It seems as far back to him as Polio wards seemed to me."
- Ginshed
Bee Sting
"I was driving down the freeway and a bee flew in through the window, directly into my neck, immediately driving its stinger into my neck. I’m extremely allergic to all bees, wasps, and hornets."
"I was in between towns. I was 20 to 30 mins from the town and last hospital where I came from and at least 30 minutes from the next town and hospital. I immediately started to swell where it hit me, and within seconds I was barely able to breathe."
"I managed to pull over on a turnout and suddenly recalled I luckily had my friend's extra Epi-pen in the glove box he had left behind. I jammed it into my knee and injected it. I passed out and woke up minutes later, heart racing like crazy, but breathing again."
- Different_Ad9336
Childbirth Complications
"I wouldn't have ever even been born because my mother would've died in childbirth with my brother."
- maplestriker
"Same for me, my mom had to have both my sister and myself removed as she couldn't give birth the traditional way."
- uitSCHOT
Hit By a Car
"Getting run over, three times, in the same year."
- Vast_Cartographer830
"I'm usually not one for victim blaming, but three times within a year? You gotta be more careful of the traffic, man."
- bodopi
"Getting run over three times over your entire lifetime is way too many times."
"Twice would be too many."
- KypDurronn
Basic Eyesight Needs
"Honestly, probably just the fact that I can't see more than a foot in front of my face."
- quirkytorch
"Shut. Up. My glasses broke two days ago. My repair kit should be here from Amazon tomorrow."
"Update: I CAN SEE I CAN SEE. ALL FIXED PRAISE GOD HALLELUJAH I CAN SEE. Praise Amazon too, I guess."
- sabboom
"If you can afford it, I would highly recommend a second pair of dirt cheap glasses. I used to wear glasses years ago and oh man, did that second pair save me so many times."
- nagesagi
Bacterial Infections
"A bacterial infection, for sure."
- idea_maxx_7777
"I got a skin infection in a small cut, cellulitis. I thought the swelling and itching was just a bug bite because I’m moderately allergic. Without IV antibiotics in the ER, I would have gone septic and died within a few hours after realizing something was actually wrong."
- 3aCurlyGirl
Ear Infections
"Childhood ear infections."
- hungrydruid
"This is a good one. I used to get them almost monthly, then mysteriously stopped after seven or eight years of being constantly ill."
- scalyreptilething
Asthma
"Probably asthma. If not, then breast cancer would've for sure."
- emotional_lemon8
"I wouldn't have made it to my fifth birthday due to asthma without modern medicine. Even still, the priest at the Catholic hospital I was in wanted to perform last rights on me due to the severity of one of my attacks. My mom refused them and I pulled through."
"By the time I hit puberty, I had outgrown it, and it's all just a hazy memory."
"As to breast cancer, my grandmother beat it twice and lived to 91 and died of completely unrelated natural causes thanks to modern medicine. I wish the same for you!"
- CBus66OR
Solved by Gatorade
"Dysentery."
"Most people back in the day died from diarrhea alone because it would f**k up the inside of their intestines and ruin their water retention, i.e. you dehydrate faster and easier and can't drink enough to fix it, which gives lighter diseases like the flu a chance to go for the kill."
"The funniest thing about the disease is the fact that it ravaged human populations for eons, and the solution is fundamentally Gatorade. It was comprised of readily-available resources we always had access to, but it wasn't until relatively recently that we had a strong enough understanding of nutrition, the human body, and medicine to realize we could literally just slap some flavored saltwater and electrolytes together and help somebody."
- SleeplessS**tposter
Modern medicine clearly has come a long way and millions of people over time, but it will be interesting to see how much more we can say has been saved in the next ten years.
When you work in healthcare, you witness the best and the worst life has to offer.
One of the worst parts of the job has to be delivering horrible news.
I always wondered if doctors think about holding back on bad news delivery in hopes of a better result in the end.
You have to tell the truth, but there are shades of truth.
Or maybe you deliver in stages as long as it's medically safe and ethical.
Does anyone agree?
Redditor common_currency asked the medical community:
"When did you have to tell a patient 'I've seen it all before' to comfort them, but really you had never seen something so bad, or of that nature?"
Just for any future docs reading, I like my bad news in stages.
The Rebuild
"I had to have my leg rebuilt after a car accident and was eventually sent to Duke university for my surgery. My surgeon was supposed to be like the best orthopedic surgeon in the country, I think he used to work for the Baltimore ravens. Anyway all the doctors from my hospital at home were very unsure if I would even have a functioning leg let alone walk normal again."
"The first appointment at Duke that dude told me it was really not a big deal and he would have me fixed almost good as new. I honestly thought he was just trying to be nice and optimistic but he was very serious. 5 months later I was walking and learning how to run again. He said I was one of the most complicated surgeries he has had to do and a group of surgeons flew in to observe him do it."
burtrenolds
Get your teeth cleaned...
"In dental school, I had an emergency patient come in, complaining of sore gums. Upon examination, I found a massive calculus bridge (google it for pictures) behind her lower front teeth. She only had about 3 remaining lower teeth, but they were all connected with a whitish brown mineral deposit that was about the size of a golf ball. She had never had her teeth cleaned and she was probably 55 or so."
"I basically performed an emergency cleaning. She could speak so much better afterwords. Of course I had to play it off like it was normal, but in my years of practice I still haven’t seen a case that bad again. Get your teeth cleaned people. Even if you can’t afford every 6 months, once a year, or every other year is a hell of a lot better than never."
Odors
"I'm a nurse and I work in a pediatric ER. A young woman brought her baby in to be seen for vomiting. I ask her to put the baby on the scale. While on the scale I notice a strong odor of bug spray so I asked about it.
"Mom: 'A roach crawled into her mouth so I sprayed a little Raid in there.' She said it matter of factually like it was no big deal."
"Que up calls to the police, CPS and a 1:1 sitter for the child and the mom. When all was said and done the baby was fine and turned over to her grandmother so no worries there. I have no idea what happened to the mother. I don't believe she was intending to hurt the child. I think she was just butt-a** ignorant."
TomTheNurse
15F
"I worked as a mental health tech to get through undergrad."
"15F in the adolescent ward claims to have swallowed a staple. Eh, but whatever, as I’m taking her down to x-ray I tell her about the dime I swallowed when I was a kid. It happens."
"Well, turns out she underestimated the number of staples by around a hundred. Every printout given by the therapists had been a swallowed staple."
"She had gotten staples from the other kids. The x-ray of her abdomen looked as if it were a weird staple-y snow globe."
"And yet, somehow, she was back to trying to steal psych ward staples a week later. Never did figure out how they removed them all."
UnfairCanary
Oh Auntie...
"My aunt started her nursing career in a county hospital, which means you get all the homeless folks. A guy came in with the whole of the back of his leg and butt utterly and very deeply infested with maggots. He just 'hadn't gotten around to' coming in earlier, he said."
"The depressing thing is that while it was a first for my aunt, it was by no means the last. Apparently it's more common than you'd think."
rowrza
I've fainted three times already.
Like the Exorcist
"A little late to the party—"
"Not the worst, but I had a patient once with a stomach bleed and a small bowel obstruction. We had to put in an NG tube (tube that goes in your nose and down to your stomach) to drain/decompress his stomach, which was pretty distended and hard."
"I’m inserting the tube and has soon as it hits this guy’s gag reflex he projectile vomits and SPRAYS very dark, half digested blood all over himself, the bed, the wall, and the floor. It’s basically a scene from the exorcist. I had to dive out of the way and somehow was unscathed. He couldn’t stop for almost ten minutes as we’re trying to get this thing down to where it needs to go."
"Finally finish placement and it immediately suctions out ~3 liters of this black sludge that is old, digested blood. Pt was mortified and we had to play it off like 'oh no no it’s fine, it’s really common to vomit during the procedure. We’ll just go get some towels and clean you up!' My coworker and I left the room and just stared at each other in silent shock."
oh_haay
the left side is gone...
"Not medical professionals, but we were the patients. My daughter, who was 3 at the time, had to have a cavity filled. As we were leaving, the dentist told me just to watch my daughter because sometimes kids chew their gums because it's numb and feels weird."
"So the drive home took 30 minutes and I had been talking to my daughter the entire time to keep her busy. I park my car in my drive way, opened the passenger seat to get my daughter out, and her entire lower lip on the left side is gone. She had chewed it off down to her chin."
"She ended up in emergency surgery, but the surgeon kept telling us it would be fine and he sees this stuff all the time. She ended up having multiple surgeries, and when she was finally healed, the surgeon told us that it was the worst injury like that he had ever seen. He wasn't sure how she would heal, but you can hardly tell it happened now."
imcloudnine
A gentle push...
"Not a medical professional, but a story about my father."
"After years of a blood disease, his spleen had to be removed as it had swollen to a size that made breathing difficult. Apparently the surgeon had a photo taken, post extraction, where he is cradling my dad's ~22.0 lb spleen."
"To top it off, one day into recovery, when doing on of those 'gentle push on the abdomen' type exams on him, my dad's sutures catastrophically failed and he let loose a spray that coated the doctor, his nurse, and a good portion of the ceiling. Luckily for dad, the hospital staff was on point that day and kept him alive despite his body's best effort."
"I heard all of this from the doctor while he was removing the line of staples (that went from crotch to sternum) some weeks later."
"Dad didn't like to share, apparently."
CallousJack
Exposed
Elaine Benes Fainting GIF by HULUGiphy"A patient with rectal cancer with an exposed colon and rectum. I could see her tailbone and and the head of the femur. And whenever she would poop, it could collect inside this open cavity and had to be flushed out."
Festigoer
Too Late
"I’m a pediatric nurse, and triaged a young girl with a rash, mom had been to several doctors and they didn’t know what it was. I recognized it right away called Stevens-Johnson syndrome, I remained calm, patient was flown to a burn center, but died. I had only seen it once before and it was fatal for that patient too."
AdmiralMeeko
I don't know medical personnel do it. Bless...
Health is just one of those topics that everyone seems afraid to discuss.
I think a lot of us believe that if we bring it up, we'll jinx ourselves and end up with something that will leave us dead.
But we can't avoid our bodies.
They're all we've got.
So it's time for some adult talk about serious matters of health.
The more you know, the better prepared.
Because sometimes a headache, isn't just a headache.
RedditorFarAsICanTellwanted to discuss medical issues we should know more about, though it may scare us. Knowledge is power. They asked:
"What is a medical condition that is a lot more serious than it sounds/looks?"
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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