Curtis Strite

It isn’t easy to be a doctor. There are literally infinite causes of any cluster of symptoms, and it’s your job to narrow that down to a single diagnosis. Odds are, you’re going to get it wrong every now and then.
In fact, the National Academy of Medicine warns that “most people” will have at least one incorrect diagnosis in their lifetimes. More than 20 percent of the patients who visit the Mayo Clinic show up with the wrong diagnosis.
The point is, doctors make mistakes. That’s no consolation when a physician tells you to start preparing for the end…and it turns out you’ve just got a cold. These patients of Reddit can tell you all about it. In fact, they will.
We’ve edited these stories a bit for grammar, style, and readability. Here are some of the most terrifying tales of misdiagnosis from all of Reddit:  

There’s one diagnosis that we all fear more than any other: cancer.

Of course, a doctor telling you it’s cancer doesn’t necessarily make it so. Here are a few folks who have stared down the “emperor of all maladies” only to find out they’re actually doing pretty alright…at least compared to having cancer.  
“Leukemia,” wrote a Reddit user, getting right to the point. “I spent two weeks continuously going to my doctor because I started feeling sick the night I graduated high school. They thought it was mono at first and did countless mono tests. They were all negative.”

Of course, cancer is just as easy to miss as it is to misdiagnose.

Here are a few Reddit folks whose cancer looked like something else—at least to their doctors.
“[The] dermatologist thought the spot on my face was acne and gave me acne medication,” wrote WickedCurious. “One year later the spot is bigger and not going away. Turned out to be basal cell skin cancer.”

If you think you have appendicitis, well, you very well might be right.

Every year, 250,000 patients are treated for appendicitis. Something like 7 percent of Americans have the disease at any given time. It’s not rare. Still, doctors often have a hard time diagnosing the condition. Here’s all the anecdotal evidence you’ll ever need:
“They said I was constipated,” wrote DialTone657. “My appendix almost bursted.”
Yes, we’re aware that the past tense of “burst” is “burst.” We were just charmed by “bursted,” so we decided to leave it. That’s what you call editorial privilege. Anyway.     

On the other hand, some patients just have weird appendixes.

It’s hard to fault the physician in the following case.
‘“It’s definitely not your appendix,’” wrote Ozyman_Dias, channeling a misguided doctor. “You’re describing pain in the wrong place.’”
“One burst appendix and a heap of gangrene later, it was confirmed to me that my appendix lay in a non-standard place in my body.”
Then there are those cases where doctors don’t diagnose anything; they just miss what’s right in front of them.
“[The] pediatrician couldn’t find anything wrong with me,” wrote dottmatrix. “A day or two later, my appendix ruptured.”

Appendicitis is almost as hard on parents as it is on the patient herself.

Here’s an epic tale that will strike horror into the heart of every parent out there.
“When my daughter was in second grade, she became very ill,” wrote JazzyJerome. “[I] made her an appointment for her doctor. [The doctor] examined her [and] told us there was a bad flu bug going around and that’s what she had. [She] gave us some meds and sent us home.”
“Later that evening, my daughter wakes up screaming, saying her stomach hurts. [I] give her meds and put a warm compress on her stomach. She falls back to sleep for around 15 minutes and starts screaming again.”
“[I] carry her to the bathroom and let her take warm bath. [I] dry her off and lay her back on the couch. She tells me she wants to lay in my bed instead. She starts walking down the hallway and collapsed, screaming in pain again. I try to pick her up and she screams louder.”

“They told us her appendix ruptured.”

“The operation would take 45 minutes or so…she was in there for two hours. Her stool had been leaking in her body, and it was all over the intestines. They had to clean her insides.”
“She spent one week in the hospital while nurses were teaching my wife and I how to give her antibiotics through a catheter. We finally took her home, where she spent two more weeks with a nurse coming to our house to clean her catheter.”
“[That was] one of the scariest moments of being parent for me.”
But we won’t end on a sad note. There’s a happy ending to this terrifying story.

Apparently, infections and illnesses are tough to spot, at least for some general practitioners.

“I had H. pylori, which is bacteria on the gut, which overproduces acid,” wrote Hoyata21. “The stupid doc said I was depressed.”
Helicobacter pylori is the main cause of stomach ulcers, and you definitely don’t want it taking over your stomach. Meanwhile, though, another Reddit user had an even worse infection.
“[The] lab mistook MRSA for regular staph,” wrote creepyredditloaner.
The Reddit user is talking about methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It’s a form of staph bacteria that’s evolved to resist many of the antibiotics doctors rely on to control infection. So if a lab calls it regular staph, the health care team will blast it with useless medications while it thrives and damages bodily systems…which is exactly what happened in this case.  
“I almost lost my leg and kidneys multiple times,” creepyredditloaner continued. “[It] took over a year to heal completely. It’s been a little more than a year since it healed, and I still have ghost sensations of fluids running down my leg.”

Just like infections, diseases of the bowel can escape the notice of the physician on duty.

“I was 18 or 19, [a] freshman in college, and [I] started experiencing this soft pain in my stomach,” wrote another Reddit user. “I didn’t think much of it, but it got worse, so I went to the student clinic. Nothing came of it.”

At least broken bones are pretty easy to spot, right? Ummmmm…

Not to alarm you, but a glance at an X-ray isn’t enough to diagnose a lot of broken bones. Based on the testimony of the Reddit community, doctors miss broken bones all the time. Here are just a few examples:
“[The] doctor told me my X-ray was clear and that my foot was fine,” wrote eatsleeplaugh. “[It] turned out they had X-rayed the wrong part of my leg, and by the time they noticed, my heel-bone was shattered completely.”

You’ve probably broken a bone at some point in your life.

Hopefully, you didn’t have an experience like this one:
“When I was about 17 I broke my fibula in two places, and the resultant chunk was displaced a fair bit,” wrote Kobe_Wan_Ginobli. “[I] went to the doctor and he pressed up and down that bone real firmly, asking me if it hurt, and I told him it did. Then he told me it was just a bruise and told my dad I just felt pain more than most kids.”

Allergies are famously hard to identify, so it makes sense that doctors make mistakes wherever they pop up.

“My mom was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was young,” wrote enchantedrosemary. “She was given a few years to live, at most, and told that she would die a painful, terrible death.”
“We packed up and moved across the state to be closer to family since my dad was going to be left alone with several small children (I was the oldest at 7) supposedly quite soon. I remember her getting frequent shots, lots of hefty doctor’s bills, her crying all the time, etc. Very traumatic.”

Some conditions are rare enough that doctors rarely even think to check for them.

“[I] had a bone cyst in my neck that was eating my spine, which had collapsed on my nerves connected to my arms, giving me the worst pain I’ve ever felt when I so much as moved,” wrote Blue-Rhapsody. “I was told this was because ‘I slept wrong’ and to do lots of stretches and exercise every day, which only made things worse.
“On the bright side, now part of my spine is made of metal, and a few years later and many surgeries, I feel almost good as new.”
We guess that’s a bright side? Let’s hear another.  
“My cholesteatoma was misdiagnosed as a bad ear infection,” wrote pianogod.
This one requires a bit of explanation. Cholesteatoma is a noncancerous growth that pops up behind the eardrum. It’s a dangerous condition that can damage hearing and even paralyze muscles in the face. What cholesteatoma is not is a “bad ear infection.”

It seems that hepatitis C is a go-to diagnosis, regardless of the actual cause of symptoms.

“My doctor told me I had hepatitis C,” wrote cant_afford_gas. “Turns out taking Mucinex can make your liver appear pretty screwed up.”
We couldn’t verify the visual effects of Mucinex on the liver, but we do know this: Other Reddit users also complained of false diagnoses of hepatitis C.
“Heh, fun story about being told you have hepatitis C by mistake,” wrote Sweetwill62. “So when I was 16, I went to go donate blood. About two weeks later I get a letter in the mail saying I have Hep C, and at the time [that] wasn’t very likely in the slightest.”
Fun!

“When you don’t have health insurance, you’re constantly gauging just how severe your ailment is and whether it’s worth taking that trip to the hospital,” says Steve DiMatteo, an Ohio resident.
Many people think accessible healthcare should be a given, but what happens when you can’t afford health insurance or choose to forgo paying upwards of $500-$1,000 each month for medical attention you may or may not need?
“Those without health insurance often go without until they are in crisis,” says Kryss Shane, a dual-licensed social worker from Ohio.
According to PBS, approximately 44 million people in the U.S. don’t have health insurance, and another 38 million have inadequate health insurance. In fact, research from 2017 shows that up to 11.3 percent of Americans can’t afford health insurance at all.

For one, they don’t get sick.

They can’t afford to. Staying healthy becomes top priority when you don’t have insurance, says digital marketer Richard Kelleher, who lives in Arizona. “That means eating correctly, being in the gym every morning. It takes regiment and dedication”
As a self-proclaimed “solopreneur” who prefers to invest in digital marketing education and training, Kelleher has known what it’s like to be uninsured for the past decade. But he notes there’s a downside. “Last year, I went to a dental school after visiting two dentists with a toothache. I ended the year spending $3,000 on dental work.”

They self-diagnose.

Google becomes the go-to for all things health. Those without insurance will often self-diagnose using resources they find on the internet, according to Shane, and this can cause unnecessary stress and anxiety. Back in 2012, in a piece for The Atlantic, writer Gary Stern reported that a staggering 97.5 million Americans used health websites to obtain information.

They take their health issues abroad.

“I travel internationally often and get all my work done overseas in countries that have better healthcare than where I live in Seattle—and is only 20 percent of what it would cost in the U.S.,” says Alex, who prefers to be identified by his first name only. He goes to Bangkok to get his teeth deep cleaned annually and receives his regular cleaning when he’s in Vietnam or Korea.
This form of medical tourism, where people live in one country and travel to another to receive medical, dental, and surgical care, is nothing new. In fact, there’s a whole association devoted to it, and that association says Americans can enjoy a 90 percent cost savings if they opt to receive healthcare abroad.
As of this year, Nian Hu of INSIDER reports that more people than ever are ditching U.S. healthcare in favor of traveling to other countries for medical procedures that are more affordable.
“Compared to the rest of the world, people in the US pay much higher prices for medical services such as hospitalization, doctors’ visits, and prescription medication,” Hu writes, pointing to a 2015 report that found 150,000 to 320,000 Americans travel abroad every year to receive healthcare.
While the pros are advantageous for people living with chronic illnesses and who can budget in a yearly trip, what about those who don’t travel abroad for work and can’t afford a quick flight out of town?

They become over-the-counter connoisseurs.

Shane points out that those who do seek healthcare treatment typically go to a drugstore or grocery store clinic for their medical needs. This is true for Alex, who refuses to buy insurance through his employer. He says he’ll try to tough it out when he gets sick. “I take over the counter meds, and usually it goes away within a few days.”
“If I do need to visit a doctor, I will usually pay out of pocket, and that is still less than what I would have paid with insurance.”

They get by with a little help from their friends.

“When you’re single and under a certain age, you don’t think about health issues until ‘it’ happens,” says Los Angeles resident Nicholas Christensen.
And by “it,” he means a big enough health scare.

While somewhat extreme, Christensen’s concerns are not exactly unfounded.
According to Maureen Groppe of USA Today, while emergency departments are required by law to stabilize and treat anyone entering their doors regardless of their ability to pay, that doesn’t mean the uninsured can get treatment for any old ailment. “It also doesn’t mean that hospitals won’t try to bill someone without insurance. And the bill they send will be higher than for an insured patient because there’s no carrier to negotiate lower prices,” she writes.

They seek help online.

Approximately 56 percent of American adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment, according to an article by Nicole Spector for NBC News. And in many cases, it’s the cost of therapy and prescription drugs that deters people from getting the help they need. So what’s a person to do?
According to Shane, those who need mental healthcare often use social media to request support when they feel lonely, or seek out online or texting therapists in an attempt to get care.

They use HealthShare plans.

“I am very healthy physically and think it is a waste to spend $500 to $1,000 a month on health insurance when there is very little chance of something happening,” notes 27-year-old Stacy Caprio in Boston. “And I’m self-employed, so I would have to cover the whole cost myself as opposed to being partially reimbursed by an employer.”
Caprio currently has a HealthShare plan that fulfills the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirement (otherwise known as Obamacare) but is also, according to her, “low cost and low coverage.”
As of 2016, due to the rise in healthcare costs, health sharing memberships have more than doubled—going from about 200,000 to about 530,000 participants annually.

They try to maintain a positive mindset.

They have to. “I have more good days than bad by using a lot of prayer and mental discipline,” says 61-year-old McGruder. She says it’s scary being unemployed and wondering about her health future at this age.
“It’s embarrassing because I have never been in this place before,” she adds. “I have to get healthier so I don’t end up in a facility with no insurance to cover basic needs.”
Ultimately, maintaining a positive mindset makes her work harder to be healthier and less dependent on medicine.
“I have to. I can’t get any.”

More Than Positivity

Overall, staying healthy and positive can only take you so far when you’re in the midst of an unexpected health scare (appendicitis comes to mind).

“I called what I did white-knuckling. I would appear to be fine, making jokes, concealing my internal battle.”
Ashleigh Ostermann, 27, has had anxiety and depression for as long as she can remember. But she recalls it really started to affect her life back in middle school. “I was always anxious, irrationally so,” she says. “It was something more than being ‘sad.’”
On the outside, she appeared bubbly, funny, and smart. “I was told that I ‘didn’t look depressed’ because I always had a smile on my face.”

Anxiety: A Mind That Doesn’t Stop

“I didn’t want to be seen as a ‘crazy person,’ so I suffered in silence for years,” says 31-year-old NYC resident Stephanie Morris, who recalls initially denying her anxiety symptoms when they first appeared in her early twenties.
“I would wake up daily with anxiety attacks,” she says. “My mind would race, and I would often be paralyzed.”
Her symptoms also included regular meltdowns in her work bathroom as well as a host of others like dizziness, shakiness, shortness of breath, fatigue, and rashes.

Bipolar Disorder: Living With Perpetual Jet Lag

“You’d never know I have it,” Krista says.
“I have to hide it from most people, because I’m worried the stigma will affect my work life.”

Borderline Personality Disorder: A Different Normal

“Some days, I’m so active, and sometimes I can barely get out of bed.”
Richard Kaufman, 49, wishes people would realize that living with mental illness isn’t just feeling blue or something you can easily snap out of. “I think other people see me as just fine—they won’t really understand my normal.”

PTSD: Trying to Stay Even-Keeled

“I know it’s not easy on my wife [when] I’m balls to the wall,” Kaufman notes.
Despite medication and attending therapy, he says his greatest challenge is staying even-keeled. “Some days are awesome—some, not so much.”
PTSD affects 7.7 million American adults. According to the Man O’ War Project, a university-led research trial at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 1 in 5 veterans are affected by PTSD and account for 18 percent of all deaths by suicide among adults in the U.S.

Depression: Feeling Sad Without Reason

“I know what it’s like to be laying on the bathroom floor, eyes swollen, tears streaming down my face, certain that the pain will never end,” Ostermann explains. “Not able to see the light at the end of the tunnel—to be sad for no reason other than not being able to help it.”

Semicolon; When Your Story Isn’t Over

“Mental illness can’t be cured in the way that other illnesses can,” Ostermann notes. “Not yet, anyway. So it’s something I have lived with and learned to manage.”
She believes part of her success comes from the willingness to admit when she needs help and knowing she is in control of what defines who she is as a person. “I acknowledge that my life isn’t perfect. That I’m not perfect. But I will not let anything get in the way of my dreams.”
A few years ago, she had a semicolon tattooed on her wrist. “It serves as a reminder that my story isn’t over.”
More than anything, she wants others to know they aren’t alone. “I’m here to say that I’m not the only one who has gone through this and the more that we talk about mental illness, the more we break the stigma.”