Surviors Share How Unseemingly Medical Symptoms Turned Life-Threating

redditors who have had major health issues what small symptoms should you have looked into earlier i owe my life to my barber when i was 17 he noticed a mole on the top of my head and said i should get that looked at two things could have happened here one i could have brushed it off two he didn't have to say anything anyway i went to get it checked out and ended up having it cut out with a scalpel turns out that it was cancerous but at the very early stages they did a little more cutting and were able to get everything out almost 20 years ago and life is good good guy baba increasingly painful periods and nasty pms symptoms in general family doctor attributed the change to age and just wouldn't take it seriously after a year of complaints the doctor prescribed birth control pills which did nothing after two years i finally lost it and cried in her office the cramps had gone from hum this is a bit more than usual to full on wtf 8 stroke 10 white's knuckle puking level pain i asked to please please be referred to an ob gyn when the gynecologist examined me he also did an ultrasound in the office he took one look at the screen told me i could dress and he'd be right back when he returned he was carrying his surgery bookings schedule a few weeks later i had a total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingectomy tubes out it would usually take up to a year to book that surgery but he said he absolutely had to find me a spot he was horrified i hadn't been seen much sooner and described my uterus as more tumor than healthy tissue it looks more like a raspberry than a pear unfortunately it was just benign fibroids but it taught me a lesson if something hurts get help yeah if you have to anything that is persistent if it's not going away it's not just anything it needs to be looked at persistent raging heartburn i was young and dumb and uninsured so i put it off i put it off for nearly three months by which point i was subsisting on plain yogurt and lentils and still having extremely painful bouts of heartburn and vomiting i had lost a lot of weight and was consistently exhausted and in pain finally went to the doctor it was a raging case of h pylori infection it was cleared up with antibiotics but my doctor warned me at the time that i had probably caused irreversible damage to my stomach and digestive system by waiting so long but she was right within a year the heartburn was back along with the nausea and vomiting i essentially gave myself a chronic disease by ignoring the initial infection moral of the story if it keeps coming back don't ignore it what could have been treatable before will turn into something worse just if anything suddenly changes without any reason i think everyone should take the time to really know their own body all your own little lumps and bumps and processes etc everyone is different so you can never rely fully on what experience someone else has had with illness if something starts being different with no obvious reason for it get it checked better safe than sorry i realized this when i was 18 a seemingly healthy 18 years old woman and one day my periods just stopped i thought nothing of it cos you know no periods equals yay a year later i received a stage 4b cancer diagnosis in my particular case my periods stopping was the first physical symptom i had other more obvious for cancer anyway symptoms came much later but it was extremely likely the cancer would have been detected a lot faster if i had gone to the doctor and investigated why the periods had stopped in the first place 11 years clear as of the 10th of april i was much taller than my family family are all around 5 feet 5 inches but i was 6 feet 5 inches by high school we always joked i was a freak or won the genetic lottery went to my father's doctor for a physical who noticed the swelling in my hands and ran a blood test it turns out my growth hormone levels were about three times the normal amount i was diagnosed with acromegaly got an mri which showed i had a tumor on my pituitary gland got it removed and was feeling better after a few years my two-year daughter with hindsight would lie on her left side on the floor randomly during the day she walked with a wide step and finally multiple diagnosis for constipation abdominal embryonic rhabdomyosarcoma after 54 weeks of chemotherapy strolling through an unimaginable medical heck she is four and almost a year in remission and hard to keep up with like she's discovering everything pain-free for the first time that's so scary poor kid my sister started to get frequent migraines just after she turned 22 frustratingly she did look into it they happened more and more often she went to the doctor who waved it off her stemming from stress her husband had just been sent to afghanistan my mom pushed for a ct scan which the doctor said was unnecessary my sister went home without any kind of prescription and a suggestion to come back in a few months if it persisted well a few weeks later she had a massive seizure got taken to the emergency room where doctors discovered a massive tumor in her brain and diagnosed her with a rare form of brain cancer she died within a year if you have migraines you probably don't have cancer and if you think you might i'm not the person to ask please contact a medical professional my mum had some light like one or two drops three times a year spotting for context she was well past menopause she mentioned it to her gp and he sent her for a test uterine cancer caught it at stage one before it spread so was able to have a hysterectomy without needing chemo or radiating therapy thank christ her seemingly small and insignificant symptom was checked out glad it was all okay for the benefit of anyone scrolling though spotting past menopause is a weird sign and usually indicates something bad going like uterine or cervical cancer i don't think you'd classify this as an illness but i would clean my ears regularly yet whenever i went to the doctors they always said there was too much wax and couldn't see anything my ears tended to hurt frequently and i had a hard time hearing for years in high school i went to a doctor who as usual checked my ears instead of just brushing it off and saying i need to clean more she decided to do a total flush it took two three hours total to get both ears cleared and when we were done she discovered i had an ear infection that was most likely a year old as a result i can't hear well out of either ear but that ear in particular has more hearing loss than the other we also discovered why i had such an abundant ovio wax we had already figured out i had hyperhidrosis overact sweet gland and that also caused my ears to make more wax i have been instructed never to use q-tips again it just cakes the wax to the sides of my ears and i go see a doctor once a month to have them flushed so had we just had a doctor flush my ears probably five years sooner i wouldn't have such hearing loss this makes me want to try getting to a good end again got sick last may and a week later my ears starting ringing and my sinuses haven't been clear since constantly draining down my throat or stuffy my gp referred me to an end expecting him to flush my ears sinuses and take an x-ray of my sinuses neither happened not me but my nine-year-old son last summer he complained about leg tiredness and slept a lot our pediatrician couldn't find anything wrong with him fast forward to january 2017 and suddenly he's constipated and his bladder is retaining enormous amounts of urine we took him to the local children's hospital and they felt that his constipation was keeping him from releasing urine so they hit him with gallons of miralax mixture to get him moving he pooped quite a bit but nothing really changed after a week of this at the hospital my wife lost her mind on the hospital staff and demanded that they think outside the box the neurology department came in and did an mri and they found that he had a fatty phylum at the base of his spine which presented as a tethered cord they operated immediately unfortunately now the damage is done my son no longer has bowel or bladder function because of the nerve damage caused by the tethered cord so we have to use a straight catheter on him six times a day and keep after his bowels with stimulants laxatives and anemos we will be entering a clinic in may where they will run a series of daily x-rays and enemas to arrive at the mixture we will need to use going forward poor kid will have to live with this the rest of his life my wife and i are sick over it if the issue had been caught sooner he might not have to deal with this if we had waited longer it's possible he could have lost the use of his legs i have neurogenic bladder bowel he will get used to caffeine and doing bowel routine besides the occasional bladder accidents and uterus you get used to it feel free to reach out if you have any questions i started craving iceberg lettuce like you wouldn't believe like i'd wake up in the middle of the night and go to the fridge just to eat handfuls of lettuce at my worst i was eating an entire bag of iceberg lettuce a day no dressing or toppings just munching on it like it was popcorn at the movie theater finally decided i should drag myself to the doctor for a few blood tests assuming i was a bit dehydrated or vitamin deficient or something my hemoglobin was 5 when it should be thirteen sixteen ideally my ferritin iron stores level was one which is literally as low as the test goes i went straight from the doctor's office to the hospital to be admitted for two blood transfusions and an iv iron infusion the hospital staff couldn't believe i'd been walking around and even working overtime with a level that low for months within 24 hours of my blood and iron transfusions my lettuce craving went away not me but my childhood best friend she had this thing where her hand would spasm it was kind of like a hand tremor i just assumed that it was a tick since i have a similar one knee bouncing up and down when i get nervous once when i asked her about it she said that she had pins and needles so i also considered that she might just be shaking it off even though the tremors were obviously an involuntary movement that's really all there was there were no other symptoms she was fine for a really long time and then suddenly she just rapidly declined within the space of 24 hours we were in class when she went down and started seizing just as quick as she'd gone down she was awake again and fine my teacher took her to the nurse and the nurse called her parents i've had to work hard to try and not be angry at the fact her parents chose to take her home that night instead of taking her straight to the emergency room she had a headache so they gave her ibuprofen and put her to bed she died sometime in the night of an undiagnosed brain tumor often brain tumors are misdiagnosed as psychiatric issues so if you notice a rapid decline in your mental health stability without any clear reason or even with a reason get a scan done when i first started having several episodes of depression 16 my psychiatrist sent me in for a drug screen and an mri of my melon he told me that the first things he looks for in any patient with no extensive history of mental health issues is drugs and tumors if you have testicular pain don't freak around seek medical attention immediately i had testicular torsion and got lucky a lot of men have lost a both testicle to this first friend he was a finnish carpenter and was hand sanding in a deep shelf area and got a splinter more like a sliver of wood into the cuticle of his pinky it was pretty freaking big and he was like it'll work its way out on its own so he left it alone and a red line started to move along his arm from his pinky up into his armpit he finally got convinced to go into the doctor turns out the red line was a infection traveling along his vein and had he not gone into the doctor when he did they said the infection would have ended up in his heart and would have been extremely life-threatening at that point second me my best friend was in the hospital eventually he ended passing but all the stress of him in the hospital and continuing on with his passing i was beginning to have nulli cramping and waking up to use a bathroom like every hour or two and not only that but waking up almost crapping myself and then spending more and more time on the [ __ ] each time like having the urge to go without being able to go after initially going long story short ended up with a pretty severe case of crohn's disease and ended up having some pretty serious six-hour surgery to remove part of my intestine bladder and colon yay not me but my wife she had a rare liver disease that sprung out of nowhere when she was 23 her initial symptom wasn't jaundice yellowing of the eyes skin like liver diseases tend to start showing themselves with but extreme itchiness she figured it was just really dry skin turned out to be pse primary sclerosing cholangitis but she's two years post-transplant and doing great i experienced a pain in my left shoulder trapezius muscle whenever i consumed alcohol which for me was an infrequent beer it was odd but not too concerning since i didn't drink very often turns out i had hodgkin's lymphoma and the pain in lymph nodes on the consumption of alcohol was a symptom seen in only a very small percentage of cases less than five percent hum anytime i consume alcohol my back aches almost as if my bones or muscles are iced over so uncomfortable that i do not often drink i always got the strangest looks complaining about that will death be more vigilant thanks to your unfortunate story my dad has a lot of moles and my mom forced him to go to the dermatologist because he hadn't been in years she was worried about a few of the big moles that she thought might be getting bigger the dermatologist pointed one out and asked if that was one they were concerned about and no my mom said that one actually seemed like it was getting smaller so why would she be concerned doctor informed my parents they were doing a biases right there and then and cut a 1.5 inch long chunk out of my dad's back it was melanoma the really bad skin cancer it turns out if a mole is getting smaller it's probably because the immune system has a reason to attack it everyone asking after my dad's health the melanoma was only stage one because the dermatologist caught it so early he's doing fine now this was eight years ago he's had another mole removed in the past few years and goes to that same dermatologist twice a year because he has quite literally hundreds of moles freckles my mom also checks on his more concerning moles pretty often and if she thinks they look strange off to the dermatologist he goes the standard for when to be concerned about moles is abcde if a mole is asymmetrical if the border is not well defined if the color is odd like black blue red or white if the dma tour is larger than the dma tour of a pencil or if the mole is evolving book an appointment with your local friendly dermatologist and take a picture of suspicious moles so you can keep track of any changes and finally if you have a family history of skin cancer or fit a lot of the risk factors even if you aren't concerned about anything in particular consider booking an appointment if it's within your means to do so on that note i'm proud of everyone for committing to getting their moles checked this was actually my mother but it's good to know if you're a woman or no women if you've been through menopause and your period comes back after over a year get it checked out it's probably nothing but it can also be something my mother is fine fortunately yes my mother had some spotting last year over a decade post-menopausal and it turned out to be cervical cancer since she went to the doctor immediately they did a hysterectomy for radiation treatments as a precaution and she's totally fine now not me but my grandfather had trouble breathing for a long time nothing horrible just shortness of breath heavy breathing etc but he had to take care of my grandma he went to the hospital when he started coughing a dry cough unable to stop they diagnosed cancer aggressive form of lung cancer and he died within three weeks the doctor told us that if he had come earlier they might be able to save him my mother had a chronic cough for years every time she went to the doctor he gave her an inhaler and allergy medication never mind that she smoked over a pack a day and a sprain she had gotten wasn't healing once she started rapidly losing weight i knew it was all over that small pain that never seemed to completely go away just under the left side of my ribcage could have saved myself the horrible experience of acute pancreatitis um but clarified this for me so i apologize for causing mass panic here is what he said physician here chronic mild abdominal thoracic pain is not a symptom of acute pancreatitis the more likely scenario is actual skeletal muscle pain in that region which as you can see from the comments is extremely common acute pancreatitis as i'm sure you know happens rapidly is very painful and can be deadly if untreated chronic acute pancreatitis equals acute death and isn't a thing chronic pancreatitis is a different beast entirely remember correlation does not imply causation pancreatitis suck pretty uncomfortable pain and you have to go through almost a whole week without any food or drink sauce i've had around 25 episodes in my life from 1998 to 2006 the last one i was in my eighth grade and i vividly remember the day i noticed that i couldn't properly see with my right eye even with my spectacles and i thought that maybe i need to get my eyesight checked because the power of my glasses might have increased i didn't give it much importance because i had exams and after four months when i finally went to get my eyes checked the doctor informed me to get to a bigger hospital because he felt it wasn't normal i went to a specialist eye hospital and they informed me that i was diagnosed with glaucoma and i had lost almost 90 percent of my vision in the right eye intraocular pressure i up in the eye that should have been below 21 was 70 which is insanely high and it was starting to affect my left eye as well where it was 23 they didn't know why i was diagnosed with glaucoma because it is very rare at that age i had get operated in my right eye immediately because medication wasn't controlling the iap i missed half of the classes in my ninth grade and then finally i had to get operated in my left eye as well in my 10th grade right before my final exams to control the condition i wish i could have been more careful and went to the doctor immediately my son was diagnosed with glaucoma when he was 10 months old most likely he was born with it he's also had both retinas reattached and cataracts removed from both eyes i had problems walking as a child and had a big role in my gait my parents and the doctor thought it was a foot problem so i was taken to a podiatrist and given orthotics which helped however this didn't fix my pronated leg doctors then said i had growing pain so my parents ignored the pain for a while especially since i never really had too many problems playing footy and cricket i guess i just learned to put up with the pain after 18 years of pain in my legs and feet i had a physio figure out that my hips didn't line up and that it was highly likely that i suffered a hip dysplasia during birth that was not corrected my right knee and foot are ruining themselves now as a result of my right leg being shorter than my left my father he would be working around the house or at his job and would just trip and fall for no reason it happened three or four times long story short it was als and he died from it just over three years after those initial symptoms high resting heart rate i had a fitbit and didn't wear it for a few months when i went back to it my rhr was 90 plus from 54 went to the doctor and found i was in hypertensive crisis with a bp of 212 stroke 104 i'm okay now but had a crappy christmas thinking i was about to have a heart attack a week before my fourth halloween i was playing on my cat in the hat scooter fell on the pavement and got a good scratch on my knee 24 hours later it starts itching pretty bad another 24 hours later i can't sleep it's itching like crazy and getting red and hot to the touch mom thinks i'm being a drama queen in her defense i was a bit of a dramatic three major and doesn't really look at it too closely 24 hours later it acts so bad i can't walk and the itching and redness is worse i end up in the hospital for a week with cellulitis that's so bad i come very close to amputation and or death i had no clue at the time but my mom said it was bad enough they told her to have relatives come visit just in case it was their last chance to do so doctor told my mom that if i had come into an office on the first or second day i may have gotten by with just a strong injection of penicillin and a week of oral antibiotics coma they told her to have relatives come visit just in case it was their last chance to do so and that my friends is how you know how close you were to death i had a patient who had experienced persistent headaches for around five months she had been to her local gp who told her it was just down to stress he eventually referred her to me after her symptoms were getting worse and worse and i diagnosed her with stage four glioblastoma a very aggressive form of brain cancer sadly she died within five weeks her prognosis would have been far better if she'd come earlier i feel like unfortunately women have to turn self-advocacy to 11 and turn off politeness to actually get help for things a tiny unnoticeable lump in my throat turned out to be thyroid cancer i wouldn't have even caught it had i not gone to my doctor just trying to get my hands on chantix to quit smoking so yeah lose some sleep over that one hypochondriacs they found my thyroid cancer after doing a ct scan for something completely unrelated it was on the interior pressing against my esophagus about the size of a pee i would every once in a while feel a little bump but it didn't hurt so i ignored it my endocrinologist told me i was really lucky to have caught it this way i had no symptoms or issues otherwise to give warnings my brother always complained about what he thought was a hernia he also said he had respiratory infections and a couple other things that started looking more and more like he was becoming a hypochondriac he also has a history of drug abuse and lying so we all kind of took it with a grain of salt last week he went to the air for stomach pain after blood and urine tests then a ct scan they found what's most likely cancer in his groin area literally waiting to hear from my mom what the biases says right now he's 39 years old it's cancer in his left testicle and evidently lymph nodes behind it they're removing the testicle and doing a biasy on it to see exactly what kind it is it can be one of two types one of which will require chemo they also have to do more ct scans of other areas to make sure it's nowhere else this is reminding me too much of how my father died i'm hoping it all ends well my mother five years ago she noticed her pinky would twitch she was a truck driver at the time and didn't want anything interfering with her income so she ignored it fast forward to three weeks ago completely bedridden spasms weakness unable to walk eat use bathroom without assistance multiple system atrophy p-type looks like parkinson's but quicker symptom onset and much shorter lifespan she'll be gone in five-ish years please if something isn't right get it checked i am so freaking sorry this is happening if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video bye for now

Channel: Updoot Studios

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Keywords: health problems, health problems solution, health problems motivation, health issues, health issues in america, #updootst, updoot, updoot reddit, updoot everything, reddit on tap, toadfilms, pewdiepie, reddit, askreddit, funny reddit, reddit stories, top posts, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, comedy, reddit compilation, /r, r/, r/askreddit, top posts of r/, askreddit reading, best reddit posts, top posts of all time, people of reddit, askreddit question, ask reddit, subreddit, sub

Id: IebjvWzdMDU

Length: 25min 38sec (1538 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020