Many of us have been there… Lost down a dramatic rabbit hole of late-night Google searches, prompted by a headache or pain that just won’t quit. One minute, we’re calmly checking our symptoms. The next, we’re having a panic attack and mentally drawing up our last wishes – convinced we’ve got a fatal case of some rare disease, and have months, if not days, left to live.
Thanks to the internet, it would seem like a medical degree is no longer needed to make a diagnosis. Armed with WebMD, MayoClinic, TikTok, and a false sense of confidence, ordinary “experts” believe they have it all figured out. But often, it’s this very determination that leads to hilarious, and sometimes disastrous, results.
Someone once asked, “What was the MOST incorrect self-diagnosis you’ve encountered in your practice?” and judging by the answers, the real doctors out there have seen it all… From a patient who was convinced they had a bee in their eye, to another who claimed they’d had 20 heart attacks.
Bored Panda has put together a compilation of the best of the worst self-diagnosis cases doctors have witnessed. While some are funny, others are quite the opposite. All are a reminder that Dr. Google isn’t always right, and it’s advisable to seek expert advice IRL when it comes to your health.
We also unpack some stats, and the dangers of deciding that your own opinion trumps a doctor’s. You’ll find that info between the images.
#1
Optometrist here. This happened while I was on rotations as a student. The practice was used to seeing patients from rural areas, educated up to highschool, usually some missing teeth. Anyway, this lady was convinced she had a bee in her eye, but it sounded more like “Derrs ahbeein merahh!” I had to leave the room to get the doctor so he could translate. She had floaters.
edit: lots of questions about what floaters are: when the jelly in the back of your eye degenerates down to a liquid you see shadows of the chunks of jelly floating around in the back of your eye. Very common as you get older, even common in some younger people who’ve played rigorous sports (football, gymnastics, etc). Thanks for all the up-votes everyone! I’m a long-time lurker and this is only my second post =).
Image source: Meeper_Beeper, evablanco/Envato (not the actual photo)
#2
I was an ER tech for a few years after college in a very ritzy suburb. We’d get a lot of self diagnosis, and just general hypochondriac’s. One time a woman came in via ambulance yelling about how her hands were turning blue, and she was worried about her circulation. A nurse, took an alcohol wipe to her hands and her hands magically weren’t blue anymore. Turns out she had bought new jeans and didnt wash them before wearing them. I’ve never seen someone so embarrassed, she practically ran out of the ER.
Image source: Hawkeye1867, astrakanimages/Envato (not the actual photo)
#3
I was the patient. On the Thursday before Mother’s Day in 2009, I was diagnosed with a kidney infection 22 weeks into my pregnancy. The symptoms got progressively worse, and on Mother’s Day, google convinced me I had a kidney stone so we went to the ER.
Nope. Just me going into labor four and a half months early.
(Side note: had the kid the next day. He’s six now. He spent 238 days in the NICU before coming home.).
Image source: stargazercmc, DC_Studio/Envato (not the actual photo)
#4
As a self-diagnosing patient…One day notice a white, hard, jagged object protruding from my back gum. Can’t believe I’m having a tooth come in, especially since I’m 23 and had my wisdom teeth taken out years ago. Go to the dentist to get some X-rays annnnd it turns out to be a piece of a tortilla chip.
Image source: JAYDOGG85, ORION_production/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#5
Just finished med school, so not too much experience, but had an elderly woman come in the ER with new onset seizure. The patient’s daughter was convinced her mother had a brain tumor. On review of the medications, turns out the patient had been out of her Xanax prescription for 4 days, and had a withdrawal seizure.
Image source: dolphin_sammich, guyswhoshoot/Envato (not the actual photo)
#6
I’m not a doctor….
So I was at a friends house spending the night. I had fallen asleep and forgot to take my contacts out. I wake up and my eyes were really hurting. I go to the bathroom to take out my contacts. I claw at my left eye and eventually manage to remove the lense. I do the same thing to my right eye, clawing at it trying to remove the lense. Eventually I realise there isn’t even a contact lense in my eye, so I freak out thinking it had somehow slid up behind my eye. I claw at my eye even more, digging around for my contact lense. I still didn’t find it. A few hours later my eye is driving me crazy and hurts like hell. So I get my parents to take me to a walk in clinic. They basically tell me I’m an idiot and that contact lenses can’t go behind your eye, and apparently in my sleep I must have scratched it out of my eye. Also I scratched my eye up so bad it got infected and I went blind in that eye for about a week… Everything is fine now, but now I know not to sleep with contact lenses in.
TLDR; fell asleep with contact lense in, scratched eye really bad, went blind for a week.
Image source: GuitarGodGavin, SergioPhotone/Envato (not the actual photo)
#7
This happened in med school. I was taking the history of a guy in clinic and I asked about his past medical problems, including if he had had any heart attacks.
He responded, “oh yeah, I’ve had about 20 of those.”
“…you’ve had 20 heart attacks??”
“Yup”
“Which doctor(s) did you see about them? Do you have a cardiologist?”
“Nah, I never went to a doctor. My wife is a massage therapist, and whenever a heart attack hits, she starts to massage some pressure points and it stops.”
“……Uhhhhh, ok……What does it feel like when you have a heart attack?”
“I don’t ever remember them. My wife tells me that I fall onto the floor and my arms and legs start jerking. She says it takes about a minute of her massaging before it stops. I then get really confused and tired afterwards, and I can’t remember much of anything that happens to me until I take a nice long nap.”
The dude was having seizures, and thought that they were heart attacks. They normally stop on their own after a few minutes (at the most), and his wife thought that her massages were curing him.
Image source: anon, SpaceOak/Envato (not the actual photo)
#8
I’ve had a patient claim that amputations run in his family.
He said that was the only reason he needed both legs taken off above the knee. He was adamant that it was not actually due to his uncontrolled diabetes, his enormous and continual sugar intake, his refusal to use insulin, or his refusal of treatment for the giant infected wounds on both feet.
Edit: If you are here to make a remark about how “no one runs in his family,” please be aware that we are currently experiencing unusually high call volume, so please remain on the line and your comment will be read by the next available representative.
Image source: auraseer, Media_photos/Envato (not the actual photo)
#9
I was the person self diagnosing.
I thought I had a really bad muscle spasm.
I actually had cancer.
Oopsie!!
Image source: anon, bialasiewicz/Envato (not the actual photo)
#10
A lovely healthy 50-something lady patient presented with her best friend because she was unable to walk.
It turns out she had been becoming weaker over the past couple of months and now had been bed-bound for two weeks.
As she talked she waved her hand over her right breast and mentioned something about a problem there. I took a look. She had breast cancer that was so advanced that it was ulcerating through the skin in an area about the size of a small orange. I’ll never forget seeing that.
It’s such a shame because she was such a lovely lady. We talked for about half an hour and during that I found that she had put it down to a lot of stress overwhelming her life lately to do with her son leaving home and a few other things. She seemed like a spiritual lady, and she was so sensitive and overwhelmed at the time that I had to take things very slow with her. During that 30 minutes I really felt that I connected with her and slowly helped her understand what was actually going on and that the next few weeks would be tough with treatments etc.
This was about a month after I had started as a junior doctor. The next day I got a complaint to my supervisor by the head nurse for taking too long with a patient, plus a whole lot of other made up stuff about being unprofessional etc to make her claim sound better. Had to go to meetings with management etc.
Anyway, the reason the patient couldn’t walk was because of high calcium from metastases all through her bones. I treated that and she was able to walk again a few days later. I looked up her file about three months after and she was still alive, on hormone therapy to slow the cancer’s progression.
Image source: anon, beautifulmomentstudio23/Envato (not the actual photo)
#11
Not a Dr, but a pharmacist so I hope I’m allowed to play.
Patient had a cold, convinced it was “severe sinusitis” (a bit of a known hypochondriac). Saw Dr, got script for antibiotic. Was convinced she was allergic to every antibiotic tried until all that was left was antibiotics which aren’t usually used in URTIs at a sub-therapeutic dose (because she’s “very sensitive to medications”). The infection wasn’t going away so she took antibiotics for longer and longer. She somehow got her hands on a blood glucose machine and must have had a reading that was slightly low one day because all of a sudden she started buying bags and bags of jelly beans because “the infection is making my blood sugar go dangerously low” (fasting ~4mmol/L, so normal). So she is taking more and more glucose (moved onto the straight glucose powder now) to control the “dumping syndrome” (I don’t think she even read the Wiki on that one…) that the infection caused. Symptom of her “dumping syndrome”: blood glucose dropping rapidly (because she is on a diet consisting of pretty much solely pure glucose) to “dangerous levels” (~4mmol/L). She is testing her blood glucose on average 20 times a day and taking about 250gm of pure glucose at least (from us) plus supplementing with lollies from the supermarket for some variety.
We’ve consulted with the Dr. Nobody can convince her otherwise, we’ve all tried. She’s put on ~15kg in the last month or so and will definitely end up with diabetes soon.
Dr made a mistake the other day. In exasperation she said to her (in her 3rd appointment that month) “You should count yourself lucky, there are people far worse than you that can’t even get out of bed”. Nek minnit, she now gets deliveries because she is so sick she can’t get out of bed…
Tl;dr – Lady had a cold is now giving herself diabetes by living on pretty much just simple sugars.
Image source: Sarcastic_Pharm, gpointstudio/Envato (not the actual photo)
#12
Man came into the ER in a panic thinking he had incurable skin cancer.
Turns out he had a wart on his foot…
Image source: stickycondom, StreetOncamara_From_Twenty20/Envato (not the actual photo)
#13
I’m not a doctor, but I am part of an entire family of hypochondriacs. The best I’ve heard was from my grandpa who was 110% sure he had ovarian cancer after watching The Doctors.
Image source: anon, LightFieldStudios/Envato (not the actual photo)
#14
Lady came to the clinic with her 8 month old baby and she was pretty pretty freaked out. Her baby had diarrhea for the last few weeks and wasn’t going away. She initially wasn’t concerned but then her friend told her that diarrhea is the first sign of AIDS and now she was convinced her baby contracted AIDS.
We quickly ruled that out through their med records and assured her that her baby didn’t contract AIDS randomly. As we finished examining the baby it started to cry so we handed it to her mother. Lo and behold she pulls out a baby bottle to get the baby to stop crying….only this baby bottle is red and is filled with Kool-Aid.
We had to explain to her that babies can’t handle sugar at that age and that was the cause of the diarrhea. She refused to believe what we said. “I was raised on Kool-Aid and look at me I’m fine”.
Man the south side of Chicago is a completely different world.
Edit: Another story from that clinic. A lady came in and after she got off the scale she asked what her weight was at. She ~10 pounds heavier than the previous visit and seemed upset. So I asked her what about her weight was bothering her.
She said she was trying to lose weight but it didn’t seem like her diet was working. I casually asked what her diet was thinking she was trying some of the new diets. Her answer was “Bacon”. Her friend told her that if she added bacon to all her meals she’d lose weight so she had been eating Bacon 4-5x/day for the last month. She was shocked when she learned that she was doing the exact opposite of what she was supposed to do.
Edit 2: The reason these 2 cases come to mind is because I was shocked by the lack of common knowledge. These people aren’t dumb they just didn’t know what they were doing was wrong. It’s a symptom of poverty and a lack of education. Both patients took the proper step’s to correcting their misunderstandings and were admittedly embarrassed.
As far as the race questions go. I now work in a rural, majority white, part of the midwestern U.S with similar levels of poverty/education as the South Side of Chicago and these patients have the same issues. They just don’t know.
Image source: DemonEyesKyo
#15
A patient came in with what he thought was a rash and the flu. He ended up having necrotizing fasciitis and didn’t survive.
Edit: necrotizing fasciitis is pretty much flesh eating bacteria.
Image source: Jatz55, MikeShots/Envato (not the actual photo)
#16
Patient is diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast, confirmed with biopsy. Surgery prepped for two weeks time.
Patient goes to an outside facility, and does a mammogram. Radiologist read states it is benign.
Patient writes an email to her primary doctor (my attending), “PRAYER WORKS. Please find attached report stating I no longer have breast cancer. Please tell Dr. X (Surgeon) that I will be no longer needing surgery.”
Cue furious emails to surgeon with sense of impending doom.
TLDR: Mammograms don’t pick up everything.
Edit to add: Sorry there is no resolution at this time – this happened last week. The patient’s surgeon is now in charge of “counseling” her to change her mind.
Double Edit 2 weeks later: Patient has been convinced to get the surgery.
Image source: dagayute
#17
Self-diagnosis? I’m an orthopedic surgeon, so patients are really often unable to diagnose themselves because they don’t have the power of MRI or scoping. The most incorrect self diagnosis I’ve encountered was a patient who believed they broke their hip after a fall when they actually had a 2 inch piece of skateboard lodged into their side they forgot about…yeah.
Image source: anon, DC_Studio/Envato (not the actual photo)
#18
While working as a nurse, had a patient who insisted that her abdominal pain was from a surgery she’d had done on her arm. She thought that a staple that had been used to close the wound on her arm had somehow traveled to her abdomen.
Image source: Anxious_midwesterner, monkeybusiness/Envato (not the actual photo)
#19
Had a friend come to me claiming she was surely dying and had colon cancer. She had dark stool, among some other things, the bloody stool being, “the smoking gun.” I asked her what she had been taking to help with her stomach pains. She said Pepto-Bismol of course.
I told her to stop taking the Pepto-Bismol, and told her to go see her primary physician about it. Sure enough it was just the Pepto-Bismol.
Image source: anon, laddawanpunna/Envato (not the actual photo)
#20
A girl i know works in ER and not too long ago a college age kid came in around midnight to get tested for herpes. They figured it must have been pretty bad for him to go into the ER, after further investigation the small red dot turned out to be an ingrown hair.
Image source: popthatshirtoff, luismanuelm/Envato (not the actual photo)
#21
I’m not a doctor, but a medical translator. I was translating for a refugee patient who asked me to tell the doctor that every bone in her face and hands was broken. She was very insistent that this was the case. She also asked the doctor for a full-body beautification surgery and this was at a free clinic.
It was apparent that her face and hands were not broken and when I relayed the information to the doctor he looked very confused. I’m pretty sure the patient was just a bit crazy because they sent her out of there with nothing more than some Motrin.
Image source: ClitBobJohnson, Image-Source/Envato (not the actual photo)
#22
Someone thought they had “a strained muscle in their leg” because it locked up and they couldn’t bend their knee, then an abscess formed at the top of their leg right at the pelvic bone, and blood/pus started literally *pouring* out, non-stop, for days.
Eventually he came to the doctor’s office, then straight to the ER, and had an abscess in his psoas muscle caused by a perforation in his small intestine. Yep. Pretty far off on that guess there, but apparently it happened right after some heavy lifting.
(to be clear for all you gym rats, no, it was not in any way associated with him lifting, it was a result of undiagnosed crohn’s disease destroying his intestines).
Image source: anon, Image-Source/Envato (not the actual photo)
#23
Had a guy come in for migraines and confidently proclaimed that the severe head trauma he had suffered 1 month prior had nothing to do with it.
Image source: coalminnow, nansanh/Envato (not the actual photo)
#24
Patient was dizzy. Patient thought she had a brain tumor. Went to the medical general practitioner. General practitioner thought she had a chronic middle ear infection. Went to the ear, nose and throat physician. ENT diagnosis: pregnancy.
Image source: briefaspossible, Microstock_Growth/Envato (not the actual photo)
#25
Not a medical pro , but I’ve wrongly self diagnosed myself for 10 years.
Every other day in winter I’d get two headaches a day. Right behind my right eye. They lasted 45 minutes. Tear eyes and stuffy nose ensued. This started when I was eleven and happened every year on the dot. I started going to the doctors and I’d get sinus headache diagnosis. Boom took pills for a month and the headaches would be gone.
So every year I’d wait about a month or two into the headaches I’d go to the doctor and get antibiotics. This went on til I was 19 and I remember the headache that changed me. I was watching a movie at the theatres, and boom i get a headache. This headache was like no other, in less than thirty seconds I was in the most excruciating pain I’ve experienced. Stabbing behind my right eye. Tears flowing.
We leave the theatre and I can’t even drive. My head is in my hands not moving at all. So agitated. I just want to sit there and snap at any advances of help by my gf. Her trying to rub my back I can’t take. I need to be left alone and not thinking. Thinking hurts. It lasts 80 minutes of me crying and just sitting there physically not able to move or comprehend speech because of the focus on pain you have.
Thenext day I’m driving and get one. I go to a new Dr and tell him “I get sinus headaches , can I get this and this and I’ll be happy to go” something like that. So him being a good Dr. takes the time to go through my symptoms and correctly diagnoses me with Cluster headaches.
All I can say is, cluster headaches. Im lucky and usually get mild headaches. I’ve only encountered 4 or 5 crippling headaches that is unimaginable. Some people get a cripplING headache every day at the same time every day.
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#26
Mom noticed I started getting weirdly easily irritable and attached to her. She figured it was a case of early anxiety or something so she mentioned it to the doctor casually at an appointment. Blood tests outed her as the silly goose she was. Was actually leukemia.
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#27
I used to be a Nursing student, and we had this lovely lady in our ward who thought she had a kidney stone. She had an xray and the xray just caught a glimpse of her lung; turns out she had stage 3 lung cancer. She took it really well, her family were devastated. It was awful breaking the news to them.
Image source: anon, shotprime/Envato (not the actual photo)
#28
Veterinarian here. Hope you won’t find this out of place. I had a client come in several years ago with a dog suffering from flea allergy dermatitis. These dogs have an allergy to flea saliva that causes them to get insanely itchy – primarily around the rear end and base of the tail. This poor little guy had chewed his fur out to the point that his back half was just about completely naked. So there he sits scratching and biting at himself, covered in fleas, several of which I have combed off of him and showed his owner. “Good news,” I say. “We can fix this.” After explaining the diagnosis, his owner proceeded to tell me how foolish I was – the dog was not itchy because of fleas. He was chewing at himself as a psychological response to the disturbance caused by having his butt shaved by an unknown intruder who must have broken into the house while they were away. I had no response to that other than to agree, that, yes, that must have been very traumatic for him. Ultimately we agreed to treat for the fleas, just in case. Shockingly, the dog got better.
Image source: anon, viktelminova/Envato (not the actual photo)
#29
Had a 19yo girl come in asking for antifungal medication because she was convinced she had oral thrush. Her and her boyfriend had Googled her symptoms, and at 19 you’re never wrong. When I suggested that perhaps we check an EBV antibody to rule out mono, she looked at me like I was actively drooling on myself and refused, because there was, “No way I can have mono.” Eventually I convinced her to have some diagnostic testing done, and sure enough she had mono. I tried to explain that having oral thrush as a 19 year old could possibly be much more concerning than mononucleosis, but she didn’t seem to get it.
EDIT: I will give the caveat that if a patient volunteers that they were looking up their symptoms online, I’ll always ask them what they think they have and why. This can sometimes give insight to symptoms or concerns they may not have let on about that help me to make a correct diagnosis. Besides, taking an active role in your health is certainly not a bad thing. As long as you’re not acting as if I’m some moron, I welcome that kind of discussion.
Image source: whiskyvinyl
#30
911 calltaker. 9/10 times this is what we get.
One of the best was “MY BABY CAN’T BREATHE!!!! SHE’S DYING AND GASPING! JUST SEND THEM!” …. then proceeds to hang up before I get an address.
Luckily I was already in the process of narrowing down her cell phone by refreshing the signal a few times (leave GPS turned on people!!) so I was 99% certain I had the right house. I start help out that way while I call her back; no answer. So I call the house number we had in previous calls for that address until I get an answer.
When she answers she’s perfectly calm and happy asking who it is. When I tell her it’s 911 and we got disconnected (no s**t, she hung up), she flips out screaming that I’m wasting time and sends like 10 insults my way. At this point I’m getting tired of it so I tell her there’s more than one person here handling her call and we already have paramedics enroute.
At this point she tries to hang up again saying her baby isn’t breathing. So I get forceful (AKA still polite but very direct) saying we need to start CPR, she says no need because they’re pouring water over her to make her breathe.
Wtf? If she’s gasping she’s going to inhale the water.
She tries to hang up again and I tell her if she doesn’t listen to me then I will make sure the sheriff goes out there (they already were, they respond to most child calls with us) for child endangerment because I’m trying to help save the baby correctly. Now “help me help you”.
Now she listens and walks into the room where the baby is screaming bloody murder. “SEE?! SHE’S NOT BREATHING SHE NEEDS WATER OR SOMETHING!”
Again, I’ve lost all patience. If the child is screaming then they are breathing. If they aren’t having difficulty crying then they are breathing fine. This kid was breathing just fine, just angry. I tell her this and she says the magic words:
“Lady I’m a CNA, I have no idea what you do but I help people.”
“Ma’am my training academy to do my job is longer than your CNA training. I don’t try to drown people when they cry.” And at this point I think I should not have said that…
Luckily the medics made it there by then and she got focused on them. The baby was screaming because they spanked a 3 month old for spitting up.
Image source: anon, YuriArcursPeopleimages/Envato (not the actual photo)
#31
So I’m a therapist and I work with kids. Worst misdiagnosis was a family with a two week old who was convinced the baby had
1)anxiety- because he cries.
2) autism- little eye contact
3)bipolar disorder- because baby would seem content then angry.
I spent HOURS explaining child development, what these diagnosis mean, how they would present in kids. I provided them with books, hand outs, etc. They insisted on going to see my co-worker and a psychiatrist as I was surely lying to them. Even after meeting with the other two professionals, they still weren’t convinced. They requested psych meds from the doc.
Image source: anon
#32
Not a doctor, but my PCP told me that I had a sinus infection when I actually needed a heart transplant. Got my transplant 3 years later. Doing great now.
Image source: anon
#33
Ooh, can I play? Only a vet, not an R.D. (real doctor) but…
a young couple brought me their young ginger cat, requesting euthanasia because he had cancer. I asked why they thought so. They cited a) the tumours on the margins of his eyelids (which were actually normal pigmentation, or ginger cat “freckles”) and b) that there were drops of blood when he jumped into the empty bathtub (which were actually re-hydrated flea dirt falling off the cat onto the wet tub). I talked them out of euthanizing their perfectly healthy cat.
Image source: yo_saff_bridge
#34
I thought I had pancreatic cancer…turns out it was just an infected gallbladder. They removed it and I am 100% fine now…
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#35
Real story as a 3rd yr med student — was rotating through a south side Chicago hospital (aka the hood), female patient in her 50s, thought she was pregnant and asked for a pregnancy test, since she was not menstruating for last couple months. Pregnancy test comes back negative, meantime we work up the history of her experiencing all the classic symptoms of menopause. Anyways, when we tried to explain to her that it was menopause, a natural physiological response to aging in females, she got extremely upset. Requested for a repeat pregnancy test, which we obliged to. Once again, results came back negative. Tried explaining to the patient once more what menopause was, however she told us we were making things up to put it pleasantly. When asked what she thought was wrong, her explanation, in her words were as follows:
1) I am pregnant with baby Jesus
2) I need to get a new boyfriend.
We tried one last time to explain the situation, however she stormed out and never came back. True story.
Image source: noxemd
#36
Veterinary Technician here.
Twice I have had people worried that their dog’s abdomen was “covered in ticks”. Turns out both times to be the nipples. One of them stated someone told them to try to burn the “ticks” off. Another one asked why their male dog had nipples and why they had never seen them before.
Another one was a guy that brought his 3 year old beautiful spaniel in because he saw “tapeworms all over his rear end”. Dog comes in severely lethargic and with a diaper on (dog also had severe diarrhea). When I pulled back the diaper… maggots. Everywhere. He said he googled a picture of tapeworms and that’s what it looked like. Uh, no.
Dog apparently had a small wound near his rear that got infested with maggots and by putting the diaper on, it only exacerbated the problem. Dog ended up passing later that evening after spending hours removing the maggots, shaving hair, and administering every medication we could. We told the guy next time to not Google things and bring in his pets immediately if there is ever anything that seems off. I think he learned his lesson.
Image source: pardonmypistola
#37
A few months ago I developed a bad sore on my upper outside gum. It hurt, a lot, and so I asked my wife (a former dental assistant) to check it out. She said it looked like an abscessed tooth.
I went in to the dentist the next day. Another dental assistant (with years of experience) took a look and said, yeah, sure looked like an abscess to her. Too bad, it’s a root canal. She took some x-rays and left. I’m feeling pretty bad about it now. I thought I took decent care of my teeth, so this kind of blind sided me. I started mentally preparing myself for seemingly inevitable root canal.
The dentist came in. He’s normally a pretty funny guy, but this time he was pretty serious. He looks at the X-rays, peers in my mouth for about ten seconds, and then stands up and starts elevating my chair. “Seven to ten days.” That’s all he said. I’m pretty confused at this point. He laughed at my expression and said, “You have one heck of a canker sore, sir. It’ll be gone in 7-10 days. Today’s your lucky day.”
I’ve never been so happy to have a canker sore.
Image source: jamon51
#38
My friend went to the ER after hours of complaining of feeling something like bugs crawling on his eye. He had rubbed it and flushed it with water and it was super red and swollen. He thought he was going crazy. The doctor ended up tweezing 6 bot fly larvae from his eyeball. Apparently there are 6000 cases a year or something in the US alone.
Image source: Fortyfore
#39
I had some guy come in the ER in the middle of the night, because he had a pimple on his forehead; he had been prodding at it non-stop, so of course the thing turned reddish.
He just sat there terrified, explaining that “I was on the Internet, and I have no idea why, but then I googled ‘head cancer’ and saw pictures and they were horrible and I went, that’s it, I’m going to the ER!”
Final prescription: do not go to the Internet for symptoms, and stop waking me up because you’ve got a pimple please.
Image source: anon, YuriArcursPeopleimages/Envato (not the actual photo)
#40
I was the person self-diagnosing. I thought I had Lyme disease. Nope, just physically crippling depression.
Image source: TheMarMar, s_kawee/Envato (not the actual photo)
#41
**Tl,dr: I think I’m having eye-strain induced headaches. In reality, the bone marrow in 1/3 of my skull had turned necrotic.**
It was the summer of 2008. I was at work with a massive headache. I decided to head home early. Thinking my eyes were acting up again. (I’d suffered from severe light sensitivity since I was 12. This wasn’t entirely uncommon.)
In the lobby of the building I pass out as I’m nodding to the security guard. I wake up in the hospital, the doctor is talking with a nurse insisting I get another set of X-rays “There’s no way this is right, have a different tech take another set of images.” Then he walks out.
I’m asking what’s up. No one is explaining anything. I have another set of X-rays done. A bunch of other Scans of which I still don’t understand the differences. And eventually the doctor comes in. Still no one has explained anything to me, no matter how much I ask “Wait for the doctor to get back.”
Finally the doctor comes in and tells me they’re going to need to prep me for surgery. I immediately ask about my eyes. He seems confused. “Did no one tell you what’s going on?”
“…umm…”
Doctor gets all upset “You’re missing 1/3 of your skull. Or more appropriately, the bone marrow inside the entire right side of your head is necrotic. It’s just sitting there between slivers of bone. When’s the last time you’ve been to the dentist?”
“I don’t know, 10-15 years ago? I was planning on going next month now that I finally have insurance for the first time.”
“Well we’re not sure how it is you’re alive. But this has been building for at least 10 years. An abscess in your gums has burrowed up into your bone.”
A week later, after a bunch of specialists are consulted, I had my teeth, gums, soft palette, and entire right side of my skull drained of fluid and removed. I was awake through most of it, and no amount of pain medication was enough to deal through the worst of it. Everything was replaced by mostly a plastic polymer, with some metal studs to snap everything together.
Edit: My photo-sensitivity issues weren’t a related symptom, if you have light sensitivity and get headaches; don’t worry. It’s normal for photo-sensitive eyes to get headaches in bright light. If you have an abscess though, go to the dentist. No matter how much it costs.
Image source: Melachiah
#42
Not a doctor but a Physio, had an elderly female patient ask if she should go and have her prostate checked because her father passed away because of prostate cancer at her age. Bless.
Image source: ktdubb
#43
Not a doctor (yet), but I work in the ER as a Scribe, so I follow them around all day. We had a lady come in and said “I got crabs”. The Doctor asked “have you seen any of them”, to which she replies “no, but I can feel them biting me. My husband gave them to me and my kids”. At this statement, we were all thinking “what?”.
However, it soon became clear that this lady had no idea what crabs actually are. She ended up having a mild rash and was discharged along with her family, but that was quite an interesting self-diagnosis.
Image source: armadilloeater
#44
This is only tangentially related to the topic at hand but gave me great joy at the time, so I thought I’d share.
During my time as an intern, a patient was admitted for anemia (hematocrit of 16) requiring blood transfusions. Turns out that at some point in the past, after she was diagnosed with an in-born error of metabolism, her primary care physician prescribed her vitamin B12 injections (your body requires B12 to make hemoglobin).
Instead of going back for refills after she ran out, however, she headed over to her local pharmacy, bought *vitamin B6* tablets, and proceeded to take *two* per day, and went on to explain how, you know doc, it’s the same thing!
Yeah, no.
Image source: bupivacaine
#45
Just a few weeks ago, I had a patient come in for an eye exam. She tells me that her allergies are really bothering her eyes and she just needs her eyeglass prescription tweaked. Her best corrected vision is 20/80 and her retina is a mess- she’s got Stargardt’s disease (not previously diagnosed). She is going blind and there is nothing we can do to stop it. I want to refer her to a retinal specialist to confirm the diagnosis but she refuses because, “it’s just allergies and I just need to prescribe her some drops.”
I should also add that her eye were not at all tearing, itching, and there was no inflammation of the conjunctiva at all- not that this would cause your vision to drop to 20/80 even if they were present.
Image source: WillieM96
#46
Had a patient who was convinced he had contracted syphilis from “immoral conduct”. After a long conversation it turned out it was just salt sores from a long period where we on short rations of fresh water and he had been washing his clothes in seawater. He was convinced he’d contracted an STD from self pleasuring and impure thoughts.
Image source: mcsey
#47
Not my story, but my brother in law’s. He’d been putting on weight again for a while, and decided to get back into lifting. Gets severe abdominal pain, thinks he tore something. Eventually my sister convinces him to visit his go, who gets him an ultrasound. One look at the ultrasound, and they’ve got him booked for an MRI that day. Wait here. You shouldn’t leave the building. Phones my sister, mostly care free, who then stars freaking out, because she works as a receptionist in a medical clinic. She knows they don’t actually fast track you through tests the same day for no reason.
Turns out the reason he wasn’t losing weight again was because of the mass roughly the size of an Aussie rules football on his stomach. Doc orders a biopsy, hopefully it’s benign. Doc gets the results, consults cancer specialist, and schedules to take it out in two weeks time.
After they get home, cancer doc called them back and says, let’s move that up to tomorrow. Turns out it was a really fare form of cancer, that the specialist had to look up the literature on. Extremely fast growing, super rare cancer with a name I can’t remember, because it’s about twenty letters long.
Eventually they remove a 3kg mass, along with part of his stomach. On chemo for a while, and six month check ups for the rest of his life, but otherwise good.
Sunny side up, it’s now real easy for him to lose weight.
Image source: Tradyk
#48
I had really bad abdominal pain and I thought I had an appendicitis but turns out I was just crazy constipated.
Image source: Anna_rampage
#49
Guy came into ED with occipital headache, talking following directions–thought it was a migrane. CT came back subarachnoid hemorrhage but by that time he had worsening lethargy, stopped following commands, intubated. Brought up to NSICU where I believe he passed away the same day
Image source: nahbah
#50
Had one guy come in thought he had a bad pimple or a boil.
Turns out it was a gummy bear.
Image source: Downvote_the_word
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