"There Were Almost No Signs At All": People Are Sharing Small Medical Symptoms That Turned Out To Be Indicators Of Major Problems
It's everyone's worst nightmare: You go to the doctor for something that seems harmless, but it turns out to be a big deal. This type of scenario actually does happen...more than you might imagine. Here are a handful of stories of patients who sought attention for seemingly small and random symptoms that ended up being major medical issues.
Note: The experiences in this post are not meant to take the place of medical advice — when in doubt, consult with your local doctor or healthcare professional.
1."Not that long ago, a 50-year-old man walked into our ER screening, complaining of shortness of breath. According to the staff, he did not appear to look ill in any way. While being processed for screening, he went into cardiac arrest due to ventricular fibrillation, as recorded on his EKG..."
"...He was cardioverted immediately, successfully resuscitated, and sent straight to my cath lab for emergency study due to a presumed Acute myocardial infarction. That angiogram done within minutes of this event was 100% normal — normal arteries, ventricular function, no spasm, no sign of any problem whatsoever.
The man was admitted for placement of a defibrillator device implant, but the next morning he signed out of our CCU 'AMA' (Against Medical Advice) and disappeared, declining all follow-up or advice. My presumption was occult drug use, but he, of course, denied any such thing, and in no way did he appear or even show any hint of that kind of lifestyle. I have no reasonable medical answer or theory for why this man died suddenly in the hospital ER (and was resuscitated) in the only place for miles around where he could receive immediate lifesaving care. Lucky for being unlucky?? Fate? I have to accept this event as a true mystery with a good outcome to date (as far as I know)."
2."About six years ago, I started feeling even more exhausted than usual. I also had lower back and abdominal pain and bloating, but I shrugged it off because women just have to deal with that. Next, I noticed that I felt full after just a few bites. Finally, my sister, who's a retired nurse, dragged me to the ER because my navel was turned inside out and so tender I couldn't tolerate a shirt touching it. I underwent a CT scan, and the ER doctor came in grim-faced. He told me I had a football-sized tumor on my right ovary, and he was pretty sure it was malignant. One total hysterectomy later, I was diagnosed with stage 1 ovarian cancer. Thankfully, six years later I'm cancer free."
3."When I was 34 years old, I glanced in the bathroom mirror at a mole on my back as I was drying off after my shower. The thought, 'That thing is going to kill me,' flashed through my mind. I thought that was so strange as I had no idea where that idea came from. (I had never even heard of melanoma.) A few days later, I was having lunch with a good friend who was a plastic surgeon. I told her about that weird thought I had, and she said that we should remove it if it bothered me. We returned to her office, where she removed it and sent it for a biopsy. Then, wide-excision surgery and the results: stage three or four melanoma with less than six months to live. I was accepted into an experimental immunotherapy program at Duke University Medical Center, and thanks to that study, the concern of my friend, and listening to my body, I am still alive over 40 years later."
4."I worked as a pharmacist at a small hospital. A middle-aged man was an avid runner, looked to be in great shape, and happened to be running past the hospital. He entered the ER because 'he just didn’t feel right’. He didn’t complain of chest pain, but he felt short of breath, nauseous, and a bit dizzy..."
"...I believe most of the ER staff thought he was having a heart attack and thought he should be transferred to our nearby sister hospital which had a cardiac floor and cath lab. The ER was short-staffed then, so an ER nurse asked me to accompany her and the patient to the MRI / CT scan area. He was feeling very nauseous before the scan and suddenly became so pale that he looked like he was about to faint, so I was torn between leaving the nurse alone with him in the MRI room and running to the pharmacy to grab Zofran to keep him from vomiting. I ran to the pharmacy to get him Zofran, gave it to him, and then he had his scan.
He ended up being diagnosed with a dissecting aortic aneurysm. The hospital was not equipped to deal with this emergency situation; we all had to move our cars out of the parking lot so the life flight helicopter could take him to a medical center that could handle this emergency situation.I never found out the outcome or whether this guy lived to tell his story."
5."This handsome, bright, cheerful four-year-old kid came to the ER because he was having trouble moving his feet around. I’ll call him K from now on. His mother told us he’d been only slightly less active in the past two days than usual. No fever, cough/flu, diarrhea, stomachache, vomiting, or any signs of infections at all..."
"...The pediatric resident then performed the physical exam; the motor strength and reflexes were quite bad, especially on the lower extremities. Other than that, everything looked good. When the kid was asked whether he experienced pain or discomfort in the extremities, he sweetly told us no, he didn’t feel any of that. He also never experienced severe headaches or dizziness. Urinating and defecating also seemed pretty normal.
True enough, the lab results came first without any abnormality. As we were waiting for the CT-Scan result, my friends and I talked a bit with the kid and his family because he was so, so endearing. In an uncomfortable room full of kids crying their hearts out, K calmly played with his mother and aunt. He also didn’t cry when the IV line was inserted earlier, although he said it hurt. His plump cheeks, clear skin, and jet-black hair also made us more fond of him. However, the situation rapidly changed when the CT-Scan result was released. It clearly showed a nasty mass on the brain, highly suspected as a malignant tumor that needed immediate surgery.
After that, it was almost like a blur. The pediatric residents consulted with the neurosurgeons. Then it was time to break the bad news time for the family: There was crying and panic, negotiation about therapy options, and the prognosis in the future. I usually don’t really involve my feelings in this kind of moment, but that night I did. Fast forward to about a week later, I had my shift in the pediatric ward. And there I found K, lying unconscious on the bed, his tracheostomy tube attached to the manual bag valve mask operated by one of my colleagues. Here, the pediatric patients who didn’t get a ventilator machine in the Pediatric ICU were placed in the usual ward, and the clerkship students like us would squeeze and squeeze the Bag Valve Mask all day and night long, alternating between 12-hour shifts. And so I spent my 12-hour weekend shift pushing oxygen into his lungs and suctioning the sputum of poor little K.
The surgery went well, but K never woke up from his sleep a week ago. Something must’ve been going really wrong. The chance of him living was always really thin, close to none. His family will always have a spot in my heart.
6."I thought I was dehydrated after a stomach bug. I called the doctor and was frustrated that he recommended I visit the ER in case I needed IV fluids. I left work mid-morning and told my boss I’d be back after lunch. The ER did a CT scan, and it turned out it wasn’t the stomach flu. I'd had an ovarian cyst rupture and had a grapefruit-sized mass of internal bleeding/clotting. I was anemic to the point they talked about transfusion. I was admitted for emergency surgery to remove the blood and stop the bleeding. They also removed my left ovary, which pathology showed had torsion."
7."I thought I was having a really bad flair-up of my arthritis in my back. I finally went to the ER after puking for a few hours and only being able to either lay completely flat or curled into a ball. Turns out I was extremely dehydrated, had an inflamed gallbladder, a really bad UTI, and my kidneys were starting to shut down."
8."I work in an ER at the front desk, and once we had a woman bring in her 20s son who didn't want to come in. The woman made him because he 'had this lingering flu.' One of the things she said that caught me (non-medical staff) was that he had this problem with his mouth and gums bleeding. I made a comment to my coworker that randomly bleeding gums is a sign of some cancers. Sure enough, the dude had a very serious and aggressive acute onset leukemia. The nature of my job means I don't get to hear the outcomes, but I sure hope the dude ended up being okay."
9."In August 2003, my Mum was found unconscious by her cleaner and taken to hospital. My ex and I were taking part in a sailing regatta near our home in Hampshire. When we got the news, we were on the beach, preparing our boat for the day’s racing. We collected our clothes from the changing room and got on the road. I was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops. They were the only shoes I could wear comfortably as I had rubbed a blister on my toe from having sand in my sailing shoes the day before..."
"...It had burst, but of course I forgot about it. When we got to the hospital, we found my mom in a side room off A&E. No one was with her. The room was filthy. There was blood and dirty dressings on the floor. Finally, after being ignored for hours, we asked to see a doctor to ask about her condition.
While we spoke, he noticed that my leg, the same side as the blister, was red and swollen. I was, by then, feeling a bit headachy and dizzy but had put it down to dehydration and having had no food all day. He was very concerned and said I needed to be admitted for some tests. His opinion was that I had septicemia, and he was right. Within half an hour, I was in a hospital bed and on intravenous antibiotics, and waiting for test results. While I have NO DOUBT that what happened was a hospital-acquired infection, that doctor probably saved my life. at least he saved my leg! The last thing on my mind that day was my own health and welfare, but someone was looking out for me."
10."I was doing my internship, and one night I was attending at triage at the ER. For some context, I’m in a third-world country at a public hospital that attends an uncovered population, and instead of one hospital with all the specialties, we have three, the 'main' one, the GyO hospital, and the children’s hospital)..."
"...There was this woman in her late 30’s. She started telling me that she had extreme pain (10/10) in her lower abdomen. There were no other signs that food could be involved or that it could be caused by kidney stones or urine infection. I proceeded to ask about her last menstrual cycle. She couldn't recall the exact date, but she said that it was four months ago. Without hesitation and without asking more or anything else, I told her to go right away to the hospital across the street because if it was something obstetric, we didn’t have anyone specializing in this hospital. Plus, if it was something that required general surgery, they had general surgeons there, too. We got a call 20 minutes later that the woman delivered her baby at triage of the other hospital."
11."I'm a nurse, not a doctor, but we had a very unusual case once. This person wasn't my patient, but I was on shift in a rural hospital. I was doing my final preceptorship (where you work one-on-one with a nurse as a student; this is the last practicum before finishing nursing school). The ER was just part of acute care, and any admitted patient ended up on acute care, regardless of why they were admitted..."
"... The ER also served as the outpatient department for patients who needed things such as outpatient IV therapy or dressing changes. A patient came in for his routine dressing change — he had gotten into an unfortunate incident with a table saw that resulted in losing a couple of fingers. He had been fixed up, and we were just looking after his clothes. He told the nurse caring for him that he felt a little dizzy. Hooking him up to a monitor, the nurse discovered he had a heart rate of 150! (Normal heart rate in an adult is 60-100; even with something such as a fever, 150 would be very high.)
He had a condition called atrial flutter, where the top chambers of his heart weren't working properly. He felt dizzy because if your heart rate is that high, the heart doesn't have time to fill properly between beats, so less blood is circulating. His 'little dizziness' landed him in the hospital with a crash cart in his room, an IV drip of medication to lower his heart rate, and one-on-one nursing care. Thankfully, I think he ended up being okay."
12."When I was an intern on my first night on call, I was asked to check in on a woman who had just had surgery and was complaining of nausea. I scanned her medications, test results, and vital signs, examined the patient and did not find anything. I ordered her medication for nausea. That evening at about 2:00 AM, I was summoned to see her again for nausea..."
"...I entered her room, greeted her by name since I had seen her before, and as soon as she saw me, she said, 'I'm having trouble breathing!' Her eyes were wide open. She was sitting up in bed, and she was clearly in distress. She clutched her chest, closed her eyes, fell back into a lying position, and was taking slow, shallow breaths. A nurse came by and helped me to check her vital signs. He said to me, 'Doctor, she has no pulse!' I whipped out my stethoscope, listened to her chest, and heard nothing. He was right. Her heart had stopped. He asked me what we should do, and I told him to call a code (blue).
Within a minute, the room was full of residents, interns, and nurses, all trying to save this woman's life with CPR and other resuscitative techniques. Her heart never responded, and she died within the hour despite the medical team's best efforts without regaining consciousness. An autopsy showed that she had a coronary artery in the heart that was blocked by a 'flap' from her artery. Her heart muscle had died due to lack of oxygen, often referred to as a heart attack.
So these things are random, and they don't always turn out well, even in the hospital with doctors ready to help. In other situations, it might have been possible to restart someone's heart after a heart attack, but not in this case. It was quite an introduction to medicine just after graduating from medical school. Patients die unexpectedly very commonly, and sometimes, they will die right before our eyes. Some problems cannot be fixed by modern therapeutic techniques, which is a hard lesson to learn for any physician."
13."I went to the doctor for a note to have a day off work since I didn't feel great and just didn't want to work. The doctor poked me in the stomach, said, 'That's not normal,' and sent me off to have a scan, which took me two months to get around to. Two weeks later, I got a letter from the doctor asking me to come in. I changed my shifts so I could make the appointment, and the doctor went off at me for not coming in sooner. He told me to go home and pack a bag. I'm off to the Royal Brisbane because it might be cancer. A few more scans later it was decided that it was not cancer, it was a 4 kg cyst. My only symptom was an enlarged stomach and the 'you're getting fat' comments from my mother."
14."MD here. I had a patient come in saying he was feeling a little tired and noticed he was having a harder time doing his job in construction (a particularly difficult type of construction). Turns out he had slowly lost 80% of his blood over a few months. Stomach ulcer. I think it was from taking ibuprofen daily to dull the construction pain, but I don’t remember. This dude was a badass to be working as hard and long as he was with only a fifth of normal blood volume (hemoglobin was low 2s)!"
15."One of our first patients after my (ex)husband opened his chiropractic office was a farmer in his late 40s. His girlfriend dragged him into our office because he had neck/upper back pain. He insisted it was just from looking back over his shoulder while plowing. When his x-rays had developed, and my husband had a chance to evaluate them, he was horrified by what he saw. The farmer had advanced lung cancer and was dead within the week."
16."My husband and I were messing around. He chased me through the kitchen, took a hard left turn, lost his footing, and fell on his side. He’s a big dude, so falling is a bit more traumatic for him. He couldn’t put pressure on his leg and knew immediately he was hurt pretty bad. He was able to crawl to the couch and, once settled, said he wasn’t in too much pain. He decided to sleep on the couch that night so he wouldn’t have to go upstairs. We made an appointment in the morning for the ER so we wouldn’t have to sit there all day, but they didn’t have an opening until later, so we just hung out at the house..."
"...He was in a decent amount of ambient pain, but it didn’t seem urgent. Once we got to the hospital, we found out that he had broken his hip (in this case, he broke off his entire ball joint from the top of his femur). The nurses said they couldn’t believe that he was able to sit up and had slept on it, implying that we should have come the night before (and probably by ambulance). It required surgery with some hefty bolts to put it back into place.
But the crazy part is that apparently a healthy 30ish year old man breaking his femur from standing is highly unusual. After several tests and an MRI, it turned out he was in the early stages of osteoporosis due to a pituitary tumor in his brain .So we discovered a benign brain tumor all because dude was wearing slippery socks."
17."We had a pregnant woman come in to see our eye department about her contact lenses not fitting. The contact lens tech came and got me because the patient’s face was so puffy and her eyelids were so edematous that she couldn't get her contacts out. The lens tech had had preeclampsia and recognized this as a danger sign..."
"...I'd never met this lady, but I took one look at her and called an ambulance. She told me she had had belly pain, a horrible headache, and vision changes. She thought the latter was caused by her contacts, so she came to our clinic. We managed to get her safely to our L&D, but over the next four days, she tried to stroke and bleed to death and had her lungs fill with fluid. Then, on day six, she sat up, wanted to eat, started recovering, and went home a few days later. Turned out she had severe preeclampsia with HEELP syndrome."
Do you have a story to add? Tell us about a time you (or someone you know) went to see a doctor for something seemingly minor that turned out to indicate a significant issue. Drop your response in the comments or in this anonymous form.
