Not a doctor, but my aunt and uncle had a Border Collie that would bury his nose in my uncle's back when he was sitting on the couch or recliner. He would walk up, sniff and keep sniffing until my uncle would shoo him away. A bit later he would come back sniff again and just stare at my uncle.


A few weeks later my aunt was watching one of the local news channels and they featured a dog that could smell Parkinson's and she jokingly told my uncle about it. He mentioned their dog constantly sniffing one spot and one spot only on his back so he went to a high school friend who was a doctor in dermatology. He said it didn't look right and did a biopsy on it. Sure enough, he had skin cancer but they caught it early and all he ended up with was a scar on his back.

AnatidaephobiaAnon Report

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I'm not a doctor, but this is what happened when my son self-diagnosed correctly.

Three years ago he developed a terrible earache and went to urgent care, where they told him he had an ear infection and gave him an antibiotic.

The pain intensified over the next day or so, so he returned and was told he should make an appointment with an ENT, but because it was the weekend, no ENT offices were open, so he had to wait until Monday.

In the meantime, his ear started draining and he saw what looked like spores in the fluid, which would indicate a fungal infection. (He's a naturalist and knows what spores look like.)

The pain grew so intense that he ended up going to the ER. He told the doctor who examined him that he had seen spores in the drainage from his ear and suspected that he had a fungal infection. He later heard the doctor talking to a nurse in the hallway, laughing and saying, "He thinks he saw *spores.*" The doctor prescribed another antibiotic and a steroid.

The next day he flew home to see us for Thanksgiving. I don't know how he managed the flight, because as soon as he got here, he curled up on the floor, howling in pain. I immediately called ENT offices all over town, but most were closed for Thanksgiving week or said they could not see him. Finally one scheduler took pity on him and said she would move things around to get him in.

A PA examined him and confirmed that it was a fungal infection. She told him that the steroid he had been prescribed by the ER doctor was the same agent used in the laboratory to *culture* fungal infections. His infection had started to enter the eardrum and from there could have spread to his brain and killed him. She gave him a prescription that cleared up the infection very quickly.

The wrong diagnoses at urgent care and the ER cost him over $1,500 out of pocket and several days of excruciating pain. The ENT's office did not take his insurance but charged him only $250 for the correct diagnosis.

BSB8728 Report

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I knew my partner had leukemia about a week before I could convince him to go to the doctor. He was bleeding and bruising really easily and had petechiae. I wanted to go to urgent care where I knew the CBC was done quickly onsite, but he instead wanted to wait to go to his primary.

I took him to his primary and had a bag packed for the hospital in the trunk. The doctor told him it was likely a B-12 deficiency but that he'd do bloodwork to put my mind at ease anyway. I asked if the CBC was done onsite or not, and he said it was sent out. I asked if he planned to rush the CBC. He got very angry and said, "there is nothing the CBC could show that would change my treatment plan." Then he told my partner he needed to stop me from googling.

We got a call that night from the lab that his WBCs were dangerously high and platelets were dangerously low and I had to immediately take him to the ER. I did, and he was diagnosed with acute leukemia.

Psmpo Report

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Not a doctor, but in junior high I had a little cough that just wouldn’t go away. My grandmother was CONVINCED it was whooping cough. I felt totally fine it was just an annoying cough. She made me go or the doctor and told the doctor that she thought I had whooping cough. The doctor informed her that it hadn’t been in our area in over 10 years so she doubted that was the case. My grandma forced her to test me for it anyway. Turned out I was positive and considered patient 0. The whole school basically ended up getting it and we had to shut down for 2 weeks until it went away.

Emergency-Economy654 Report

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Patient here. I was right about having a pituitary microadenoma causing Cushing’s disease. I asked multiple doctors to help me with various symptoms, including a neurologist, and it was missed for years. Finally a wonderful endocrinologist agreed to test my cortisol and it was sky high. 18 months out of surgery and I’ve lost 110 lbs, no longer diabetic, blood pressure is great, no more kidney stones (I had 8), hair has grown back, glaucoma is gone, etc. Most doctors just wanted to diagnose obesity instead of seeing it as a symptom of something else.

Antique_Albatross Report

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Patient here, half way though my cancer treatment tell them it's back.
No one but mom listened to me.
After two months of non stop telling them they did a scan.
Turns out yes I had cancer again and look it was getting close to being terminal.

The student doctor learned to listen that day.

vicki_cass Report

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Patient here. Told my family GP (who I’d seen since I was a kid, and who worked with and saw both my parents as patients for years) that I thought I had reactive hypoglycemia.

He scoffed. “You don’t have that. Why would you think you have that?”

I told him my symptoms. He was doubtful, but told the nurse to get me a Coke and made me chug it. Sent me to roam around the hospital for a little bit, then get bloodwork and come back. 

I came back, and his first words were “This is so aggravating.”

“Does…that mean I have it?”

“YES THAT MEANS YOU HAVE IT.”.

reddit.com Report

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When I was pregnant, I was hospitalized overnight due to one of my routine labs being abnormal. Along with high blood pressure, my liver enzymes were extremely high but everything else came back normal. I spent the night googling my labs and symptoms and asked my nurse if it could be HELLP Syndrome, which is a very rare form of preeclampsia that can cause your liver to bleed and can kill both you and your baby if let go for too long. The only cure/treatment is to deliver. She literally laughed at me and said there was no way I had it, because I would’ve been in more pain.

2 weeks later I had an emergency induction due to HELLP Syndrome. Thankfully we are both okay, but I will never get over her being so flippant about something that easily could’ve killed us.

baidre Report

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Had a patient who came into the ED with vague mild abdominal pain whose friend recently died of colon cancer. She was convinced she must have it too. Told her cancer wasn't contagious like that, but ordered a CT scan because she was so insistent in order to reassure her. Low and behold, she had a huge colon mass. Very bizarre case.

harrycrewe Report

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Woman in her 40s came in and told me she was having seizures.

I asked how she knew and she said her right hand would periodically stiffen. There was no loss of consciousness or other symptoms more associated with classic seizures, but I ordered tests anyway.

Turns out she had been having multiple focal seizures.

darcydidwhat Report

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EM/ICU doc here with over 10yrs of experience.

While it's not quite a diagnosis, experience has taught me to take very seriously when a patient states he's about to die, even if he appears in a stable/controlled condition.

Patients who have a life-threatening condition usually have a premonition about their imminent decompensation, which is usually preceded by very subtle signs of worsening that may be confounded with pretty much anything that happens on a resuscitation room or on the back of an ambulance.

I've had patients who appeared to be in a completely stable condition, with acute conditions where cardiac arrest was not foreseeable (example: motorcycle accident with single limb injury), who briefly mentioned they think they are about to die before suddenly entering in cardiac arrest due to a malignant arrhythmia.

It's believed that patients may perceive a sudden drop of blood pressure and/or the usual release and spike of adrenaline and other catecholamines as "imminent death", but the reason why this happens is not clear. Some we are able to return, others we lose, or "recover" them to a state where death would be better.

shaarlander Report

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Not a doctor, but a patient.

I got mono at 16. It didn’t leave. I was getting recurrences twice a year where my lymph nodes would swell and I would get sick just like the first time, my blood tests showing glaring red positives for mono markers.

I got my tonsils out in my 20’s and the mono seemed to subside.

Two years later I got all the same symptoms. Swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, all the rest. I went to the urgent care. The PA took one look at the bumps under my arms and prescribed me antibiotic cream for ingrown hair. I told him about the mono - he rolled his eyes and told me they were infected ingrown hairs. I insisted on a blood test, even if I had to pay out of pocket.

Blood tests came back and not only was I positive for mono, the markers were 19 TIMES the normal numbers for a positive case.

This thread made me remember that story. Haven’t thought about it in a while.

creepy-cats Report

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I’m a nurse, but just had a patient who came in for a colonoscopy due to constipation and pain with bowel movements. He told me prior to the test he felt like there was something “catching” on the left side of his abdomen when he pooped and was like “maybe I have a big polyp there or something.” Sure enough, he ended up having a 2.5 cm polyp that we removed from that exact area. I’ll never get to find out if that catching sensation ever went away for him, but I thought it was interesting that he was right.

madicoolcat Report

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Patient here.

I had a work accident. Opened the roll up door on my delivery truck and the load of tires fell hitting my shoulder and neck.

Couple days later I started having fainting spells and my arm became swollen and discolored. Lots of neck and shoulder pain.

Lots of doctors. Lots of tests. Lots of specialists. No diagnosis.

I came up with the solution. I tore the anterior scalene muscle. As it healed it compressed the subclavian artery and nerve that go to the arm.

Key to this explaining the swollen arm was a quirk of anatomy. The artery was compressed between where the carotid and veterbral arteries branched off. The carotid fed my brain but normal flow to the vertebral was cut off.

So my body did a weird thing. It reversed the blood flow pulling blood out of the Circle of Willis, a loop of blood vessels in the brain. That was the only blood feeding my arm for several months.

A doppler ultrasound confirmed Thoracic Outlet Syndrome with a Subclavian Steal retrograde blood flow in the vertebral artery.

que_he_hecho Report

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A cousin from Sweden went on a trip through Africa. His aunt (my MIL) is a doctor in South Africa. She told him to call her if he has any symptoms when he goes back home because she knows that European doctors struggle with tropical diseases.

He goes home, gets sick, calls her, she diagnoses bilharzia and tells him to repeat the treatment after two weeks - the standard single course schedule never worked for her patients. So off he goes to these Swedish doctors who have never seen bilharzia and they don’t really believe him but since he was recently traveling they decided to test after all. It’s bilharzia.

And of course - they wouldn’t repeat the treatment because their books specify a single course of medication. And of course- it returns. Eventually they prescribe two courses, as my MIL said in the beginning. He was fine after that.

Beneficial_Remove616 Report

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Patient, but I ran cross country in college. My senior year my thigh aches. I told everyone something was wrong with my bone while being told it was a muscle issue. After being treated for every muscle issue in the book, I demanded an x-ray. I had a stress fracture more than halfway through my femur.

Lampy-Boi Report

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My husband was bitten by a spider. We live in Australia so I knew the signs to watch for. He showed none of them but I wasn’t happy about a couple of comments he made (“I don’t like this funny metallic taste in my mouth”, “I don’t feel too good”) so I took him to the ER despite everyone saying he would be fine and that I was over reacting - I shouldn’t burden an already strained system. We got there and I went to the desk and told them that something was wrong, my husband had been bitten by a spider and … right then he collapsed. He wouldn’t have survived if I didn’t listen to my gut and hadn’t taken him, because a 5 minute delay waiting for the ambulance would have meant it was too late. .

KetoCurious97 Report

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Had a patient come into the ED, and told me he had epiglottitis (an uncommon infection of the epiglottis, part of your throat) when I went to see him. I asked how he knew - he’d had it before but was also a 90 year old retired ED doctor. He was right.

talashrrg Report

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Patient here.  Was thru hiking the Appalachian Trail and was in southern Virginia, near Roanoke. Was having a fine day until I went to pee in my motel room - straight blood. Also had been getting weird spots and sores on my legs that didn’t go above my waist or below my ankles. ER doctors (3 of them) all stated it was a tick borne illness, considering I had been hiking for a month in the woods. Rocky Mountain spotted fever probably. But I had that in college and knew it wasn’t it. I told the fourth ER doctor who came in that based on my googling I had Hennoch Schonlen Purpura, an auto immune disorder that is very rare in adults. She agreed, sent me to Virginia Tech for a biopsy and they confirmed vasculitis. Went on to get arthritic pain in my knees and severe abdominal pains. Went for an ultrasound and discovered I had underlying Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney disease - that after testing, I did not inherit from my parents. Doctors began talking to me like I should be in a textbook. 7 years later I am symptom free and just taking a small dose of blood pressure meds but felt like I was on House for a few months there .

Par3Hikes Report

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Patient here (I know, I know, I'm sorry). I had been having various digestive troubles for a few weeks, but thought I was just recovering from food poisoning or at worst maybe developing something like IBS/IBD. One night while I was lying in bed with my hands on my stomach, I felt a lump. Instantly nervous, I started pacing around my house, googling symptoms. Of course webMD and various articles kept suggesting cancer, but of course it's never cancer.
Well... It was cancer. Stage IVB ovarian to be exact. Whoops.

sirromtak Report

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Patient here. I’ve always known I have “something” wrong with my heart. I was never taken seriously as a child and a teen by anyone and the PCPs I saw never did anything more than listen to it for a few seconds and tell me I was fine. I just learned what I could and couldn’t do in my daily life to keep it from interfering and over time sort of left it at the back of my mind.

After a series of unrelated medical events over the course of a couple of years, I was aware of my heart getting worse. After much pressure and persistence I got a referral to a cardiologist who told me to track my vitals on my Apple Watch for a few months and come back to him with the results, as he was off on leave until then. I was a bit bummed. It had taken a lot to get a referral to him and I was still being brushed off. Then COVID hit and everything pretty much shut down in my country for 2 years.

During that time the only notable event was being hospitalised for kidney issues after severe gastro that left me so dehydrated I was hallucinating. Just before discharge I had a doc come around to do final obs before releasing me. It was a teaching hospital, and he had a gaggle of students with him. He listened to my heart and got excited and then proceeded to use me to teach said students what an S3 heartbeat sounds like, and how to find it. None of his talk was directed to me, but I listened and I learned.

I got myself the best portable ECG Holtier type monitor I could afford and I wore it to take ambulatory EGCs… And then I learned to interpret them. Obviously not to a medical standard, but enough to be able to note the areas of concern, what abnormalities in the waves I’d noted, my bp and what I’d been doing at the time, physical symptoms, etc.

Then I went back to my cardiologist and told him I had WPW Syndrome, and it was getting worse, and he needed to do something before it killed me. He scoffed at me, but I’d been expecting that and handed him pages and pages of relevant ECG recordings and asked him to at least prove me wrong. He looked over the ECGs and my notes, told me he knew medical students who weren’t capable of this (which scares me tbh!), ordered his own tests targeted on the info I’d gathered, and not too much later begrudgingly confirmed my diagnosis of WPW. One catheter ablation later, my life is much improved.

Stupidest thing is, if I’d been taken seriously at any point prior it could have been managed with medication, and not done permanent, irreversible damage to my heart. I shouldn’t have ever had to learn to read ECGs, nor spend hours on medical sites reading medical journals researching heart conditions. I’m still convinced I’m going to die of a heart attack, but at least it won’t be today, or hopefully tomorrow.

RamblingReflections Report

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Not a doctor (apologies), but I diagnosed my husband with gall stones when his doctor, urgent care doctors, and his mother wouldn’t listen to me. The doctors thought he just had a stomach bug and his mother was convinced he had heart issues because he was experiencing chest pain. I was the only one who noticed his eyes had started turning yellow and that the chest pain wasn’t in the right area for a heart attack. The last time he went to the ER I told him to ask about gall stones, sure enough that’s what it was and they had caused so much damage he had to have his gall bladder removed. His gall bladder ended up being 0.6” inches thick when it got removed. The surgeon said it was the worst gall bladder he had ever seen and I’m pretty sure he kept it to show to his students/interns.

lilbitmomma1419 Report

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Not a doctor, but i (correctly) told my doctor that I had dengue fever. I had just returned from Puerto Rico, and had all of the symptoms, except for bleeding. The Dr dismissed my suggestion and told me that i had the flu. After a few days, he relented and had me get a blood test. And it was dengue fever!

daisy-girl-spring Report

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