Going to the doctor can be helpful or frustrating. Sometimes you get answers, other times you're just left with more questions.
But what happens when you get answers, but they're wrong?
Reddit user Samwiserthegood asked:
"What is the craziest misdiagnosis that you have heard about or experienced?"
Colon Cancer
"My 17 year old son had bloody stools for a few weeks. The doctor ran some tests and told him he was fine, to go home and eat Raisin Bran."
"Turns out he had cancer in his colon (lymphoma), and it was very aggressive. He had to have emergency surgery that night."
"After the biopsy, the hospital called and said Good news! It's benign!"
"Three hours later, the doctor called and said Oops, sorry, actually it is cancer, and we have to do a colon resection, followed by a very aggressive chemotherapy regimen."
"Freakin' roller coaster."
"That was 15 years ago, and he's doing great! Complete remission."
~ garenisfeeding
Parkinson's Disease
"My GP said I was probably just tired and diagnosed me with fatigue. During the next two years I lost the ability to walk and started shaking before I got diagnosed with Parkinson's."
"He thought it impossible to be my age and get it so it never crossed his mind."
"I had symptoms at 29, but diagnosed with Parkinson's at 33."
~ Mateba6
Osteoarthritis
"Being told that I'm too young to have the health issues that I legitimately have is so infuriating! I am 39 (40 tomorrow, Woop Woop!) and I just recently got my 'official' diagnosis for the arthritis that I've had since my early teens."
"I can't tell you how many doctors told me that I have all the symptoms of osteoarthritis, but that just couldn't be right because of my age. I finally got a referral to a rheumatologist who listened and now my insurance company is refusing to pay for the medication they prescribed."
"Last person I spoke with said I might have to get a second opinion due to my age. I swear, the more health issues you have, the harder it is to be taken seriously by medical professionals."
"The amount of times my very real symptoms to several different issues have been blamed on 'anxiety' should be illegal, I swear!"
~ LalaThum
Celiac Disease
"Definitely not the craziest, but this happened to me. When I was 12, I would get horrible stomach aches every morning and would spend a lot of time in between getting dropped off for school and first period hiding in the bathroom or just sitting in a hallway waiting for it to subside."
"I was late to class so often that it was seen as behavioral, and my ADHD/depression meds, both of which I was already on, just got upped. Those are both legitdiagnosies for me, so I guess no one thought to look into it further."
"Turns out I have celiac disease and my body was just fighting for its life daily after my morning toaster strudel."
~ z0mbie_boner
Epilepsy
"My sister is epileptic. Since her seizures also look like someone high on drugs, our primary care doctor and 7 separate neurologists told my mom to send my sister to a drug rehab to clean up."
"This is despite my mom videotaping the seizures."
"Neurologist #8 went 'yep, that’s a seizure, let’s get you some meds' after 30 seconds of footage."
~ gothiclg
Multiple Sclerosis
"I saw my doctor when I was 25 years old because my toes were numb. Diagnosis: poorly fitting shoes."
"Yeah, OK, I had super stinky feet so I always bought cheap shoes. Never heels."
"As I aged I sorted out the stinky feet (connected to psoriasis) and I started buying nice shoes but still, my toes never regained feeling. Ahh, I guess I permanently damaged them."
Lost feeling in my right hand a few years later. ER diagnosis was, and I quote what was said to my face after a physical exam and nothing else 'well it's not a stroke *shrug* bodies are weird'."
"I literally continued on with life with limited feeling/sensation in my toes and my dominant hand.
At 37, from my knees down would go numb when I was lying down to try to sleep. Weird."
"It got worse and spread up my legs so I went to my doc (different from years earlier).
Yeah, I had/have MS."
"I guess no harm no foul for the original diagnoses since I'm not disabled, right?"
~ dinosarahsaurus
Brain Tumor
"Not me, but a friend of mine had a seizure at age 16 and had been taking keppra for like 15 years. She stopped seeing neuro since she hadn’t had a seizure in years; her PCP was prescribing the keppra."
"She started having seizures again out of the blue with disorientation and speech so slurred her boss started accusing her of being high at work. She finally got in to see a neurologist, who did an EEG and said she was fine, but increased her meds just in case."
"I urged her to get a 2nd opinion, as I was sure that sounded like a tumor with the sudden onset and breakthrough seizures with the increase in meds. Turns out, it was a tumor behind her ear."
"Second neuro referred to a neurosurgeon and she had to have brain surgery. Since then, she’s had no seizures and hasn’t been on any seizure meds whatsoever."
~ Fickle_pickle_2241
Cellulitis
"When I was in the Marines & in combat training at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, shortly after basic training, I started noticing a pain in one of my feet. I was in a class at the time and it progressively got worse as that class dragged on, and I mentioned it to a guy sitting next to me after he noticed me squirming around like I was uncomfortable.
"He happened to glance down and said, 'Oh my god, dude...look at your foot'. It was starting to swell so much that you could actually see it through the jungle boots I was wearing."
"I went to a Corpsman (medic) to get it checked out and it was so swollen by then that they had to cut the boot off, and I guess because my foot had swelled up so much the skin broke, but the wounds from where the skin broke looked like a snake bite."
"So the initial diagnosis made by the medic was that I had been bitten by a venomous snake. This is like 45 minutes to an hour after I first noticed pain, so the whole time the humvee was taking me back to a hospital (we were out in the field at the time), which felt like an eternity even though it was racing at high speed on these dirt roads, I was thinking I was definitely going to die."
"Fortunately at the hospital it was diagnosed as cellulitis (a bacterial infection), which can be potentially serious too, but it felt like good news compared to a venomous snake bite."
"I probably got it from a blister from one of the many humps (forced marches) we were doing, later getting exposed to swamp water."
~ Pixelated_Penguin808
Liver Failure
"I started gaining 20 pounds a month and multiple doctors told me I was eating too much. By the end I could barely walk to the kitchen to get food or even stand up."
"I was down to less than a thousand calories a day and still gaining weight. I was finally hospitalized and it was end stage liver disease."
"The first night I was in the hospital they stuck a huge needle in my abdomen and sucked out 10 liters of fluid. Over the next six months I lost 150 pounds of fluid, 14 liters at a time once a week."
"I eventually had a liver transplant. I was not a drinker and there never was a diagnosis for why my liver failed."
~ blippityblue72
Gallstones
"I went to a GI when I was having severe abdominal pain that made me feel like I was having a heart attack, couldn’t breathe, just absolutely miserable."
"He didn’t want to do an ultrasound because he thought it was acid reflux. Turns out I had a gallstones."
"You have to advocate for yourself. Some doctors don’t listen."
~ Just_Dont88
Broken Bone
"I stepped in a hole in my yard and felt a 'pop' and sharp pain in my foot. It went away after about 20 minutes."
"3 days later, the pain came back, and progressively got worse over the next week until I could barely stand to walk. I went to see my doctor, he did the standard xrays and didn't see anything."
"Then he proceeded to tell me about a patient he'd seen 2 months earlier who had a similar pain in her foot. Upon examination, he determined that she had stepped on a sewing needle, punctured her foot, and developed an infection."
"Then he looked at me and said, 'I'm pretty sure the same thing happened to you. You probably stepped on a needle and didn't know it. Here's a script for Keflex' and walked out."
"Before I go any further, let me make something clear. About 20 years prior to this, I had an anaphylactic reaction to Keflex and nearly died. It's in my chart in big bold red letters that I am not to be prescribed Keflex."
"So, I had to track him down, get him to change the script. Fast forward 2 weeks, after the round of antibiotics for this mysterious needle that attacks people's feet with no warning, I am in far worse pain than ever."
"I go back to see the doc, he says, 'Well, the antibiotic just wasn't strong enough. Let me write you a script for Keflex', and I just about lost my sh*t with him. So, after a very terse conversation, I was off to the pharmacy for another 10 days of antibiotics."
"Fast forward another 2 weeks, pain is excruciating. Call the doc, he schedules me for an MRI to find the infection, as well as a bone scan to rule out a tumor."
"Bone scan comes back positive for a fractured bone in my foot. When compared to the first xray, it is obvious in both."
"So I went through 3 months of hell (first injury through recovery, boot, crutches, whole 9 yards) just because he had another patient at some point in his medical career who stepped on a needle and got an infection."
"The kicker is that if he had listened to what I told him during the first visit, that I had stepped in a hole and felt a pop and instant pain, this could have all been avoided."
~ Sparky3200
Deep Vein Thrombosis
"No one caught the deep vein thrombosis in my right calf, despite a couple of Doppler scans, and having passed out at work. Doctor said it was cellulitis."
"The doctor even admitted me to the hospital and put me on heavy-duty antibiotics the next day. While in the hospital, started having chest pains and my heart pounded just walking to the bathroom."
"They hooked me up and monitored my heart; nothing wrong. Hospitalist releases me the next morning, even though I know something is wrong. Get home, and I have to rest going up the flight of stairs at my house."
"Two days later, at my younger son’s soccer game, I pass out twice. Rushed to the ER—turns out I had two huge blood clots on my lungs (pulmonary emboli). Put me on mega clot-busting drugs and I stayed in the hospital for seven days."
"I have a genetic mutation that predisposes me to blood clots, and I was on birth control pills—perfect storm. Needless to say, I’m off birth control and on blood thinners forever."
~ piemom9397
Brain Aneurysm
"My friend's doctor kept telling him his headaches were just stress. I said try my doc and get a second opinion—worst case you're out $30 co-pay."
"My doc sends him for MRI or whatever and it turns out my friend had survived a brain aneurysm. Apparently it was close to the 'surface' of the brain and those are more survivable than those deeper down."
~ monogreenforthewin
DeQuarvain's Tenosynovitis
"My left thumb was in constant pain, couldn't make a fist or grip a mug. Saw the nurse practitioner at our local place. She said it was just over-use, gave me a velcro wrist brace and told me to take ibruprofen."
"A few months later, it got bad again, went to the urgent care at the same facility, saw another NP. She sent me for a hand X-Ray and said it was DeQuarvain's Tenosynovitis, basically inflammation of the tendons around the thumb joint, and told me to follow up with a hand specialist."
"She gave me a new wrist brace, with a thumb stabalizer, and that really seemed to help more. Hand specialist, a week or so later, tells me there is literally nothing wrong, nothing he can see on the X-Ray to indicate DeQuarvain's."
"At worst, he said I have 'maybe a little arthritis'. He told me the brace should help if I want to keep wearing it, just don't over use it, take inbrofen. I wore the brace pretty regular when it got bad, tried to be mindful of it to avoid flare-ups, but it just sucked all the time."
"Fast forward a year or more, I broke my left arm/wrist in 4 places, needed surgery to pin it all back together. The surgeon tells me, 'I noticed from your X-Ray, it looks like you've got DeQuarvain's Tenosynovitis too. I can release that while I'm in there'."
"He did and my thumb has been fine ever since."
~ AmIonFire
High Blood Pressure
"I was diagnosed with BPD and severe anxiety, along with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (basically seizures caused by anxiety and stress). I was having multiple seizures every day and had one so bad I wound up in the hospital after I couldn’t stop seizing for 15 minutes."
"The doctors thought I was faking everything because of the BPD diagnosis until they did an EEG."
"Turns out I just have chronic high blood pressure, so high that it was giving me seizures. It’s been two years I’ve been on beta blockers and I haven’t had any attacks, and my BPD diagnosis was removed."
~ threadbarefemur
It never hurts to get a second opinion... especially if your gut tells you something is wrong.