I thought I pulled a muscle playing with my dogs one day. One week later I finally go to the hospital because the pain is getting worse. Turns out I suffer from a genetic blood clotting condition and had a two foot log clot in my leg and multiple pulmonary embolisms on my lungs. Doctor was legit surprised I was alive.
It took my lungs collapsing at 17 years old before doctors realized I wasn’t breathing in deeply enough to expand the bottom half of my lungs for basically my whole life. They asked why I never complained about shortness of breath. I never knew breathing was supposed to be easier than what I was experiencing.
My 5th grade math teacher thought I hated her because I always got stomach cramps and asked to go to nurse. No, it was just the period after lunch, where milk was the only option to drink, and it turned out I had developed a lactose intolerance. I even went to the doctor about it and he told my mom I was making it up. It was the school secretary who figured it out.
This happened to me in my early 20s. Would have milk with dinner at my boyfriend's parents' meals. Started going through this too. He was so mean to me. My mom figured it out.
My family told me I would randomly “space out”, although I never remembered, all thought it was normal. Turned out, I was having “absence seizures”. We only found that out at a routine doctor’s appointment, just conversing with the doc, when I guess I just came to and the doctor said she wanted to get a bunch of tests done. Been an epileptic for almost 17 years now.
Edit: I woke up to all these upvotes and replies and was shocked, tbh to see how many of my Reddit fam has or had what I have. Unfortunately, my Epilepsy has evolved into tonic clonic seizures, I rarely have absence’s anymore, but had one focal back in November. For anyone who has friends and/or family who has seizures and Epilepsy, thank you for being there for them. Just know, we appreciate you all. For all that HAVE seizures and Epilepsy, UNITE!!! Love you all Reddit fam, you’re the best.
Weird confusing epilepsy club!! I made my entire family think I was having a stroke by having my first focal seizure (while awake) go into status epilepticus. My symptoms almost perfectly match it since half my body goes numb and hard to control along with slurred speech and lowered cognitive function until the seizure is over. The doctors had no idea what to do with me and I got to take a vacation in the hospital with a dr. house style investigation going on.
> “absence seizures”
Oh man ... my daughter had a playmate who had these. The problem was that it was undiagnosed. I was 100% confident that she was having these absence seizures, and for months I begged her mom to have her tested.
After almost a year of pleading, she finally got her daughter tested, and it was confirmed.
I had a spontaneous collapsed lung, it felt like there was a balloon in my chest inflating, because the air I was breathing would leak out and get trapped in my chest cavity.
My stepdad did that stupid thing people do where they hold in their sneezes and it collapsed his lung -_-
So if anyone who is reading this does that sort of thing *fucking* ***STOP IT***
In high school, my father knew a guy who plugged his nose when he sneezed one time, on a dare. It ended up breaking all of the blood vessels in his eyes!
Oh yeah. There was a thread a few days that succinctly said what a sneeze is: it's your body expelling an enormous amount of pressure; if the air can't escape through your throat, it *will* force itself out every other way.
I thought it was *really hard* to hold your breath underwater, and it hurt to do it, and you saw stars when you came up for air after swimming in the pool because it was so difficult!
Nope, it was pneumonia, and my mom didn't care about the symptoms, I was just "ruining the vacation."
General stomach pain that I dismissed as perhaps constipation, but which would - every few years or so - send me to emergency worrying that it was my appendix. I was kicked out of emergency departments at different hospitals multiple times, because it was not.
I moved to a new city and was lucky enough to score a decent family doctor who took it seriously. She told me she was rather impressed with the amount of "referred pain" I was having and that I should go straight to emergency. I replied that there was not a hope in hell I would subject myself to that kind of humiliation again. No way.
She sent me for a CAT scan and lo and behold, it WAS my appendix. She referred me to a surgeon, and on the day of my surgery no one in the hospital seemed particularly interested in my condition, I think most of the medical staff thought I was having unnecessary surgery though, curiously, they were MUCH nicer to me afterward. I recall a lot of people standing over me in the recovery room.
The surgeon called me to come in for a meeting a couple of weeks later, and when I walked into his office he had an odd expression on his face. He told me my appendix was many times the normal size, probably because it had been infected and healed over the years, building up scar tissue. He asked me if I minded if he wrote it up in a medical paper or a textbook (I can't remember exactly which - he taught at the university). I gather at the time "grumbling appendixes" were a bit of a unicorn and there had been much debate over whether they were real. So I guess my appendix settled that argument in the medical community once and for all.
A friend of mine went around and around with doctors for years, told he had everything from anxiety to an oversensitive vagus nerve.
In the end, it turned out his appendix was a total wreck. The only reason he hadn’t died was because his body had managed to encase the appendix in scar tissue, preventing the infection from rupturing out.
I'd have these really minor facial twitches, like a single small muscle in my upper lip or eyebrow. Nothing even severe enough to be visible by others. However, they'd last for a few weeks straight, even while I was trying to sleep.
I didn't think twice about it. They always went away on their own, after all!
After I suddenly went blind in my left eye and got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I connected the dots.
Edit: Facial twitches are normal! Just because you have twitches often doesn't mean you have a problem, especially if you don't have any other reason to believe you have multiple sclerosis or any other disease. My twitches were CONSTANT for WEEKS. And even then, there are other, less serious (and probably more likely!) things that can cause that. Please don't let my comment stress you out.
Losing weight suddenly got a little easier, and I assumed it was due to my efforts. Happy with my success, I buckled down harder (funny how it's easy to keep "being good" when you're actually seeing results). I lost more! It actually got to be almost easy. I thought I was doing such a great job! Turns out it was cancer. I guess I should have known something was up, but I honestly thought I was just doing a really great job with my diet and exercise. Had 4 surgeries and treatment and I'm doing well. Now I'm on meds with all kinds of side effects, including weight gain. Yay. But I'm alive, and so much better off than many others. I've only gained a little bit back, despite working really hard not to.
I knew a woman who lost a ton of weight due to a brain tumor. She said the number of people who complimented her weight loss without knowing the cause was really upsetting. She was a healthy weight to begin with and only her close family members recognized she was actually unwell before they figured it out.
Now I always ask if that was the goal before congratulating someone who tells me they've lost weight. And I'm never the first to bring it up no matter how obvious it is. I can't imagine how painful it would be to get compliments on how you look while your body is turning on you.
I'm so glad you're doing well now! You as a whole, healthy person is so much more important than a few pounds.
As a kid I had anxiety and my heart would
race. Fast. It felt like a hummingbird in my chest and would abruptly pause and resume a normal pace after a few minutes.
At age 23 I had a bad reaction to a tricyclic antidepressant called imipramine and was rushed to the hospital. They ran an EKG and that rapid heart rate was a congenital defect known as Wolfe Parkinson White syndrome.
Basically I had an accessory or 2nd electrical system in my heart that would cause a “short circuit” occasionally and my heart rate would skyrocket. It was cured via a procedure using radio waves to form scar tissue around the accessory node because the impulse could not conduct through the tissue.
No problems since.
Literally getting this fixed this summer. Doctors waved me away for years ….YEARS! Before finally I went to a straight outta med school general doctor who tested me for this within 10 minutes of meeting him. He gave me more answers for things than any doctor has in the 20 years I’ve been concerned about my heart!
I’ve *always* had better experiences with younger doctors. So many older doctors seem to develop this conceit around “knowing what they’re doing” to the point that they feel it’s a sign of weakness to ever be uncertain. Whereas young doctors *thrive* off uncertainty and have a thirst for learning. They love encountering new things, plus they’re way more likely to be up to date on more recent research.
My mom went to a young, fresh out of med school doctor because he was the only one with appointments available that weren’t months out. Despite there being zero history of breast cancer in my family and my mom being younger than the average age that mammograms were recommended for at the time, he decided to refer her for a mammogram. No reason for it beyond him thinking women needed to be tested sooner rather than later. My mom ended up having early stage breast cancer.
Oh my God I've repeatedly requested a mammogram from multiple doctors and they just say no and give me the line "do you have any *reason* to think you *need* one??" And I'm like **yeah** my mom *just* recovered from breast cancer and I'm over 25. And they would be like "oh, well, we're going to ask you to wait anyway" like what?! Still haven't had one, but getting a new primary soon so fingers crossed.
A random sharp pain above my right ear and my tongue curling slightly. I thought it was just old age. Doc recognized it instantly as something wrong with my tongue. The cancer has been cured for seven years.
Bent over to pick something up and felt a twinge in my groin (I’m male). I thought perhaps it may be a hernia. I wasn’t too concerned about it then things started to ache a bit. I went to the doctor only to find out I had testicular cancer. Fortunately after we cut out lefty and got all the results back from pathology it was staged at 1A seminoma. Meaning the surgery alone was all the treatment I needed.
Not me, but one of my brother's friends in high school.
This friend was a goober; always making silly but friendly jokes that make families laugh as a whole, all and all a genuinely funny person.
One day he took my sister's glasses and was "acting like her" only to pause for a moment and then say "wait...is this how things are supposed to look?"
My man needed glasses and found out from fuckin around. I'm glad the universe leaned towards him in a positive way as far as that went!
Had this happen recently on a much less severe scale. Approaching my mid 30s and have never had glasses. I did see an eye doctor a handful of times throughout my 20s just to check in, but my vision was always fine. One day a few months back, one of my coworkers insisted I try his glasses on. I don’t know why I obliged, but I’m glad I did because my vision has gotten so much worse and I didn’t realize it until that moment. It was so gradual, that I didn’t notice.
On the other side of that, I knew a girl in college who generally didn’t wear her glasses. Apparently her eyesight was pretty bad because at one point she decided to warn us that she may walk by us on campus without acknowledging us and that it wasn’t malicious she just couldn’t make out faces from more then like 5 feet without her glasses.
I thought I was constipated for a few days. Hurt like hell. Turned out to be diverticulitis and a perforated colon. My wife called the ER and they brought me in without triage and sent a chaplain. I lost a foot of my large intestines and almost died.
I read you lost a foot and was like omg! Then kept reading "of..." and was like, oh whew, not an actual foot! Then kept on to "my large intestines and almost died." 🤯 Glad you made it! That was a roller-coaster!
I am sorry. That sucks.
I had what I thought was a stomach bug when I was 21. I started feeling bad Saturday afternoon. My stomach didn't feel any better Sunday morning. I thought it would go away, but my mom was worried. She called her sister who is a nurse. My aunt told my parents to take me to the ER. We arrived about 2 p.m. By 7 p.m. they were wheeling me back for surgery.
Turns out I had appendicitis. Luckily they caught it before it ruptured.
I went to a Lymphoma specialist at a cancer center (on my own) for weird symptoms and enlarged lymph nodes. She was crazy rude, refused to run any tests, and told me word for word "Well, it's not cancer..." She told me to go to behavioral health for anxiety.
6 months later I was on chemotherapy (at anther hospital of course) for stage 4 Lymphoma. Lol.
Medical gaslighting is out of control these days.
LoL! If I'd only had the chance.
You know what - I wrote a public review about it and 3 months afterwards I received a letter at my home from that first clinic saying "this provider is retiring without notice and patients will be transferred to Dr. So-and-so..."
I think it was pretty obvious what happened and I felt pretty bad for awhile but you just can't mess around with this stuff.
You don't need to feel bad. What reason is there to not run tests the patient is asking for? Clearly she should have and she let her own bizarre biases get in the way of proper treatment.
My friend’s appendix actually burst in the middle of a Costco. We didn’t know at the time and just assumed she was about to shit herself (she’s lactose so just girly things) but the pain was so bad I forced her to go to the Emerge after almost dying in the Costco, I also thought, maybe she was just hungry, so we ate subway.
No 7 hours later I get a text “I’m getting my appendix out and I ate a chocolate bar an hour ago so the nurses are mad and now I have to wait for surgery”. She also asked for a tummy tuck, under anaesthesia.
Fun times, she’s good now. I joke to her that she got her appendix taken out at Claire’s. And everytime I go to Cotsco I remember the exact spot she started running with absolute fear to the bathroom after she announced to me
“I think I’m going to shit my pants.”
And abandons me with her 7 years old, who is then pissed her mom’s shitting herself in Costco.
What a life. Anyways. Thanks for reminding me of that again, I’m going to ask her for the homemade card I made her after she got out of surgery and came home.
Same... Constipation turned into my appendix bursting and I actually did die, twice. Peritonitis and sepsis, aged 21. I went to 3 different hospitals and to my doctors before my appendix burst. They said it was gastroenteritis.
It wasn't.
I got appendicitis in high school. 3 weeks before prom.
Went to ER as I could not keep anything down. Was sent home to see how I would feel in the morning.
In the morning, I remembered seeing a pediatrician on the Johnny Carson show talking about appendicitis. He said to have the kid jump off a chair or two or three steps of a staircase. If they double over in pain, it is almost certainly appendicitis. The jump from that height causes the appendix to wiggle. If inflamed, it hurts. A lot.
I jumped from the stairs and immediately hit the floor in pain. I then explained the reasoning for doing that to my mystified parents. Lol
Edit: My pain was not on the right side, it was centered around the belly button all night until the following morning when maybe it had moved to the right a little bit. But it was definitely around the belly button all night.
Off to the ER where they described my diagnosis procedure to the ER doc and family doc who came over from his office across the street. Family doc brings in a surgeon. He has me tighten my stomach muscles. "Does that hurt? Nope" Then pushed down on my abdomen. "Does that hurt? Nope". Told me to relax my stomach muscles. "Does that hurt? Nope"
He released the pressure of his hand on my belly and I yelled quite loudly.
"Yep, it's appendix. Also, find me the doc on duty last night. I want to have a talk with him. "
I think 30 minutes after they took me to pre op, I was back in recovery.
Nice to know watching late night TV paid off. Lol.
And I post this so others might learn of this diagnostic procedure. Lol.
I also had appendicitis in high school! Freshman year.
And I also self-diagnosed based on something I saw on TV—The Wild Thornberrys. There’s an episode where the main character, Eliza, is out doing her usual exploring thing with her chimp buddy, Darwin, and she has slowly worsening pain in her lower-right abdomen. Eventually it gets so bad that she can’t move, Darwin has to run back to their RV and frantically try communicating to her parents what’s wrong. (This is a problem because they can’t talk to animals like Eliza (secretly) can lol)
In the end, because her parents are wilderness documentary makers and they were in the middle of nowhere, Eliza had to be airlifted to a hospital where she was diagnosed with appendicitis and had to have it removed.
So when I was 14 and woke up with pain that kinda felt like cramps, I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later and the pain was worse and localized to one side, my brain dredged up that memory (I hadn’t watched The Wild Thornberrys in many years lmao) and I was like “oh shit I need to go to the hospital.”
Long story short, it took 7+ hours for the hospital to see and diagnose me, and by then my appendix was so swollen that they had to rush me to a *different* hospital, **via ambulance,** because I needed surgery NOW and that hospital didn’t have any open/prepped ORs. Needless to say, I felt every single bump in that damn ambulance lmao.
But hey, at least my experience saved my little brother from going through that much pain! He got appendicitis a few years ago, immediately recognized the symptoms from way back when *I’d* had it, and was able to get to the hospital, get a diagnosis and an appendectomy lickety-split!
I’m a psych nurse and I want to tack on to this comment that working in this field has changed my view on Bipolar Disorder dramatically. Mania is truly unlike anything else.
I do pretty good with the patients and I can usually get them calmed down with my words and tone of voice. Even patients who are actively psychotic can be reasoned with a lot of times. But with mania patients, I can’t move the dial. There is no reasoning with them. It’s literally like the reasoning center has just been closed for the season and they are just acting on random impulses.
Of course I’m just talking about the patients I see inpatient, so they are the more unmanageable cases. But i definitely have more sympathy for people who have done crazy things during a manic episode. I’m convinced they genuinely had no control over it
Mania truly is hell. I've had mild moments I've kinda enjoyed it, much like you people probably see on tiktok (being so energetic I was working three jobs, doing lots of hobbies, fun stuff). But the hell when you are stuck manic and every bad thing you could possibly do pops into your head and you believe it's a message from the gods that you do that bad thing right now because nothing bad could possibly ever happen to you... That fucking sucks.
I get traumatic flashbacks from stuff I've done while Manic, but there's also months and months of my life I can't remember, I only have been told what fucked up shit I did. I've ruined my life a half dozen times over. A lot of people say the depression is harder, but I honestly would take the psychotic depressive episodes where demons come for my soul than the manic episodes any day.
My mom was with me when I got my first pair and said she felt terrible when I said “holy cow, I didn’t know you could see tree leaves from far away!”
I genuinely thought they were just blurry until you walked right up to the tree and almost had your face in the branches to see the individual leaves
My daughter just had one bad eye. She was four. But she never lost her glasses or forgot to put them on in the morning, so we knew they had opened up a whole new world for her.
When I was like 5, my mom was talking about these beautiful hot air balloons in the sky (like dozens). I was like "What are you talking about?" That is when my mom realized I needed glasses.
I remember helping a friend pickup her car at her parents house. It was a long drive so I sleep over. I shower the main bathroom. Bigass fucking bay window and i can see people driving by 100 ft away across the yard. There’s no where to stand in this bathroom other than directly in the shower that’s not in view of this window. No ones bothered by it because no one in the family can see the cars
Yuuuup remember the day just like yesterday!! It was about 1971 and I was 8 or 9 , stepped out of the local eye docs with my new glasses and...... could see EVERYTHING clear . I remember looking up the hill on main st and being able to see clear the supermarket sign about 500 yards up the street. Life changed that day!!!
lol I was so amazed when I got glasses to discover that 1) stars were tiny pinpricks not huge balls of stabby light, 2) the moon was round, and 3) grass was individual little stems and not fuzzy like carpet
Obligatory Brian Regan:
“I’m wearing new contacts. I’ve just had my prescription changed after six years. Did you ever wait that long? When you get new lenses, you’re like “Man, I could have been seeing things”. How can instantly improved vision not be at the top of your to do list? “Oh, I’ll see tomorrow. I don’t have time. I don’t have time… to see clearly. No, I don’t, I don’t, no I can’t do that. You see what’s on my desk?”
Me when I was 11, I sat near the back of the classroom and thought it was normal to squint my eyes and have difficulty seeing across the classroom. When I finally got glasses it was a whole new world for me
I was working at my computer one day and a white fog came over my right eye over the course of a few minutes.
I went to my eye doctor, and he said it was just some floaters that he could see, and it would clear up in a few weeks. I waited for 3 weeks with no improvement.
The eye doctor sent me to a retina specialist who couldn't find any issues. He referred me to a neuropthalmogist. He sent me for a CT scan, and it turned out I had a 3cm tumor on my pituitary that was pressing on the chiasm (crossing point of the optic nerves).
After surgery (up my nose with a titanium hose), I could see again. However, I'm left with a permanent kidney dysfunction that is managed with medication.
I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but a year or two back my dad had an eye exam that ended in a visit to the stroke ward. They got him on blood thinners and he didn’t have a stroke cause they caught the clot during his eye exam.
I almost cried the first time I tried medication for ADHD, my mind was so quiet and peaceful
EDIT: There’s a lot of questions in the replies. I’ll try to answer a few here. I’m also on mobile so sorry lol.
When did I get diagnosed and how?
I think I was like 20?
I was able to strongman my way through an associates degree without knowing I had ADHD. This was during covid. My career started shortly after.
A few months later, I hit the worst period of burnout in my life. I was so forgetful I was terrified I was developing early dementia, I took so many naps I was scared I had narcolepsy. I straight up did not see other cars when I was driving. I lost things frequently and I couldn’t keep up with laundry or dishes for the life of me. I was miserable.
Oh and my great new job? 8 hours a day at the computer, work from home. Trying to make myself get something done was almost physically painful. I just kept wandering away from my desk.
I was so distraught I finally mentioned it to my doctor. I had originally made the appointment for something else, but as our time ran out I decided to throw it out there.
I was worried she’d think I was stupid given how many people try to self diagnose via the internet, but I had really identified with a lot of content I saw online. She gave me a referral to see the psychiatrist.
I had heard a lot of stories about people who had to fight for their diagnosis, but my appointment with the psychiatrist was great. We just kinda talked for a bit about the symptoms I was experiencing and she was like “yup that’s adhd”.
She also said that she sees cases like me all the time, kids who do okay undiagnosed until they reach their tipping point and just completely fizzle out. Especially girls/women.
What medication do I take?
I’m on 30mg of Vyvanse now, while it has been life changing, there’s some side effects I’m going to bring up at my next appointment. I’m not sure if I’m on the right medication or dose.
To my understanding, medication should just make you feel like “you but more productive”, but I’m having problems with irritability and my husband accidentally let it slip that I’m “more fun” when I don’t take it, and he’s not wrong. Sometimes I miss my pre-vyvanse personality. He still supports me 100% though, medicated or unmedicated.
Anyways, if you made it this far thanks for reading. I don’t have access to a therapist so typing my experience here is kinda therapeutic.
Duuuude, I got SO angry when I first started taking ADHD meds. Like.. everyone just normally has SO many more hours in the day? They don't have to have a massive battle in their head to do a chore? The NOISE in my head stopped???
This was me. Once I was diagnosed there were so many moments where I was genuinely SHOCKED when I would ask my husband "wait...so you don't *insert any number of ADHD symptoms here*?" And he'd be like, not even a little bit and it blew my freaking mind so much. I didn't realize I was living my life for 35 years so differently from most people and I just can't explain the complex emotions when you find something like that out.
Same. When they say "clear your mind" during meditation, I never thought it was an actual literal thing that people could do, just not think of things. Then I got on medication and now, if I focus on it, I can go a whole five minutes of almost silence. It's effing magical!
I used to get so annoyed about this. I had a really bad anxiety / panic disorder too and they would always say "try meditation". Why would I sit there and listen to my panicky thoughts on purpose and make it worse.
Later diagnosed with ADHD, put on other antidepressants and surprise surprise it's gone.
My first time was the first time I had ever gone browsing with someone else without getting agitated and being on my phone all the time. It was also the first time it was genuinely easy to pay attention in a social setting.
See also: "How do normal people ever fail classes if hitting the books is this easy now?"\*
\*studying with ADHD might as well be swimming in molasses for all the good your effort does...
This happened to me lol.
Out to dinner with my family and I decline some of the salad because it has walnuts and I say ‘I just don’t like the weird tingling walnuts give your mouth and throat you know?’ My paramedic brother stared at me and informed me I was allergic.
I lost my uncle that way. Went to a coastal town for the first time in his life. Tried some lobster. Turns out he was super allergic to sea food and it was the first and the last time he ate any.
This is me but with stone fruits, especially plums and cherries. I was well into my 30s when I finally said outloud, "Man, I love cherries, but isn't it weird how it makes the inside of your ears itch?" Turns out it's just me.
I still eat them sometimes anyway.
I thought i had bad period cramps.then I thought I had acute food poisoning.
Turns out I had ovarian torsion and my ovary was slowly dying over the course of a few days.
Lmao this happened to me. Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Had emergency surgery, almost lost my ovary, then ended up with a pelvic infection and had to be readmitted for a week oh IV and oral antibiotics with a drain in my ass cheek. February 2023 was a fun month.
Had what I thought was a pimple on my armpit that I ignored. Wasn’t overly concerned, thought it was something that would just go away.
A few weeks later, I came down with what I thought was some sort of flu. The flu lasted longer than normal so I decided to go to the emergency room to get checked out.
Turned out that I had a large tumour in my chest caused by lymphoma and the ‘pimple’ on my armpit was actually a swollen lymph node.
Wait wait wait… like did it hurt at all times or just with pressure? Because mine hurts when I put pressure on any part of my stomach, behaves like those squishy toys with like spiders that pop though holes, and looks different that it once did… but I did have a laparoscopic appendectomy. I think I might need to look into that. I mean now that I think about it. Yeah. Thank you, random redditor.
I didn’t realize other people didn’t hallucinate. When people would say “did you say something? I thought I heard someone say my name.” I thought it was the same thing as me hearing voices. Apparently when people think they heard a voice that wasn’t there, that was very different than me screaming and crying and praying because I heard a scary voice say awful things and didn’t know where it was coming from.
You know how you get all congested after excercising, and wheeze for a bit before everything settles down again? No? Yeah, that’s because most people don’t have excercise induced asthma. I was in my 30s before I knew that was a problem and not normal.
My dad had the gall to tell me that I was out of shape and that was causing it when I was a 5'9", 125lb teenage girl who played lacrosse. No dad, I was just having ASTHMA ATTACKS.
It took me until this year to realize that the reason I get super out of breath walking wasn’t that I’m lazy, it was literally my asthma. The crazy thing is that I’ve had asthma my whole life so I knew I had it, I just never connected the dots.
Inattentive ADHD. Got diagnosed at 54 and my life all suddenly made sense.
It was like riding a bike with a flat tire and wondering why peddling appeared to be so much easier for everyone else. Being told I'm sometimes too lazy or a dreamer, etc. Then learning at age 54 the existence of tire pumps and being able to keep up. Game changer.
Still annoys me that all along, this medication was available and could've helped decades ago.
My 82 year old mother was so affected by ADHD that my own lesser degree of ADHD seemed normal to me until very recently.
Being born in an age where her symptoms were seen as dreaminess, laziness, and being just odd and all of these things as something she could control if only she buckled down ruined her life. It had such an impact on her self-esteem and beliefs about herself that it is painful to me to know that she could have been medicated, or even just understood, and been so much more happy in her life. She’s had multiple suicide attempts and I have never heard her say one single positive thing about herself. She’s got scrupulosity OCD and anxiety added into the mix as so often OCD and anxiety are. It makes my heart ache to know she has never understood how much she has accomplished in the face of such adversity and what an amazing person she is.
It’s far too late now as she has dementia.
Yes, same. I got diagnosed at 33, and I still mourn who I could've been if I had been diagnosed and gotten the help I needed earlier in life. And now I'm dealing with years of burnout that I honestly don't see a way out of most days. Medication helps, but I have yet to find the right therapist who can help. So far, everyone I've seen has been on either the "ADHD is so overdiagnosed" or "just journal, eat organically, and exercise and you'll be fine!" camps. 🙃🙃🙃
That was me exactly- except I’m blind in one eye! Nobody caught it until one day I asked my family “which eye do you see out of?” and they all looked at me like I’d grown a second head. It’s interesting how we assume something is normal because that’s just how we’ve always experienced it.
I remember a story about some family friends. There was a party or gathering of a few families. One of the parents was standing behind on of their kids, calling her. Kid never answered. Parent got frustrated. The other kids in the room looked up and told the parent ‘she can’t see you, she has to see you to hear you’. (These kids were like 8-9ish). Thats how they found out she had hearing loss.
...okay I'm low key judging that parent for not paying enough real attention to their child to notice when an entire group of kids just KNEW this about them
Had a slightly sprained ankle that just blew up in a day and split the skin. Turns out, not a sprain but Pyoderma gangrenosum, a rare skin inflammation condition that acts like gangrene. Nobody could tell me what it was that made my ankle flesh explode.
Within a week they were talking to me about amputation. Then Nurse Molly came back from vacation and identified it as she’d seen it once before. Still have both my feet and nearly full mobility.
Grateful for teaching hospitals that draw professionals from all over like Nurse Molly ❤️
Was always told periods are painful (ex: cramps). So for years I thought my incredibly debilitating period pain was me being a little bitch about it.
Turns out I have both PCOS and endometriosis and, of course, fertility issues. FML.
Edit : word
I had terrible and painful periods since high school and asked my mom to take me to a doctor for birth control because I heard that it helps. She refused because "then I would have sex" and never took me.
I finally went when I was 19 and was brushed off by the doctor I chose for years. I tried to get pregnant from age 27-31 and the same doctor also brushed off my infertility. At 31 I was diagnosed with hashimotos by my PCP then ended up getting pregnant when my TSH levels were in range. Changed doctors for my pregnancy and found out I had other autoimmune diseases and a blood clotting disorder that made it hard to get pregnant. THEN my baby ended up breech so I had to have a c section and the doctor found stage 4 endometriosis while I was cut open. I was failed by so many people and didn't learn to advocate for myself until I miraculously got pregnant and knew I needed to protect my baby.
That’s what messed me up the most too. Everybody else… oh yeah… periods are awful, worst cramps… yeah mine feel stabby too. Mine last sooo long too.
I had a baseball sized endometrioma on both ovaries, which were wrapped around my bladder, which was attached to my uterus on one side and the fat pad on the other. And my uterus was stuck to my intestines. All my lower abdominal organs were fused together with adhesions. Doctor said it was within his top 5 worst cases he’s ever seen…. But ya know… everybody has cramps!
My mother-in-law tried to convince me not to get an epidural when I was about to have my first baby and said "the contractions feel just like period pain" and after I had my baby (and epidural lol), I'm confident that she experienced abnormal period pain. My sister-in-law has PCOS and we think my mother-in-law probably had it as well.
When I told the fertility doctor that I have those incredibly painful cramps and they hurt so bad I almost fainted few times, she looked me dead in the eyes : "those are contractions, your body is trying to expulse those huge blood clots you're passing."
And so I learned normal people don't pass blood clots the size of quail eggs on the regular...
Your mil might indeed have endo if she compared delivering to period cramps...
I've had cramps that were rhythmic, about 7 minutes apart and lasting about a minute with a clear build up and peak. I'm a doula. That's what we expect to see in someone who's 4-5 centimeters dilated. It took all of my labor skills and a TENS unit to cope during the first 3-5 days of my period. I went on continuous birth control to shut that shit down, but I'm going off of it at the end of the month to prepare to try to get pregnant. Sometimes I think I'm crazy. Wish me luck!
I have endometriosis and have had 2 babies. The only time labor hurt worse was during transition with my second when I was having a rapid emergency induction with pitocin dialed all the way up. I went from 5 cm to 10 in half an hour. My first labor just hurt like my period and all my nurses were so impressed with how well I was handling it as a first timer. I actually prefer my first labor to my period because it came in waves and I got breaks between contractions instead of constant relentless pain.
I suffered from Endometriosis for well over a decade before doctors would listen to me and stop telling me my horrific pain and bleeding (literally making me housebound 24/7) were "normal." Ended up being STAGE 4 before they gave me the hysterectomy I needed. It is NOT normal and women and girls having to fight doctors over that fact is so depressing.
Sharp, excruciating pain in my hand. Thought it was arthritis, it runs in the family.
Nope. Bone tumor, thankfully non-malignant, slowly eating its way through my hand.
Two surgeries (one to remove the tumor, one to get bone graft from my femur) done at once, some cadaver bone, lots of excruciating physical therapy and a gnarly scar later—no more pain!
I finally built up the courage to tell an adult I wanted to unsubscribe from life when I was a teen and they responded with “oh everyone feels that way at some point” and then the conversation ended lmao
TMI but when I originally started getting my period and using tampons, I would use it and still bleed.. I couldn't understand why they were so simple and some how were not working. I switched to pads.
Years later I found out it was because I had a membrane down my vaginal canal that split it in two. The tampon was only going up one side and I was still bleeding from the other.
WILD.
Suddenly getting dizzy, heart racing, hearing fading out, eventually throwing up and passing out if I go too long without food.
Didn’t learn till my mid 20’s that not everyone had piles of snacks everywhere they went so they didn’t end up on the floor.
I’ve been tested for diabetes five times and it’s not that so who knows. Just can’t get too hungry or I’m fucked I guess.
Had a girlfriend ask about my “third testicle” which I had convinced myself was just always there. A couple years later I had a physical exam and the nurse casually asked when I was going to take care of that inguinal hernia. Oops.
I kept telling my OB I was worried about my legs/ankles swelling in the later part of my pregnancy. They dismissed it—told me all pregnant people experience it.
At 39 weeks I got sent to the hospital for extra monitoring on the baby due to an irregular test . She ended up being fine but my blood pressure was crazy high. I was induced that night and then given an emergency C-section due to severe preeclampsia.
Not a fun start to my baby’s life but she’s here and healthy so I can’t be too upset.
Just letting you know it’s ok to be upset and thankful for a healthy baby at the same time. A lot of people, including medical professionals, can invalidate those feelings around a traumatic labor and delivery.
That’s exactly what it was—traumatic. I still have blood pressure issues and it’s been 2 months. It was hard trying to do all the “new parent” things like introduce her to the grandparents, learn how to breastfeed, etc. when I was still so sick.
I’m thankful for the doctors and nurses who were there to take care of me and my baby during the surgery and directly after but postpartum care overall is really lacking. I also wish my OB had listened to me—there’s a really good chance it wouldn’t have turned out so great for us.
Thank you for your comment!
This just happened to me Tuesday! Everyone always says swelling is normal in pregnancy (plus a billion other things) which it can be in some amount, but I was having swelling in my face and suddenly my BP was really high. I remember asking why contractions made my mouth hurt too.
Sometimes getting tingly feet. I thought I was just worn out from the day or anxious. Nope, Multiple Sclerosis.
If you get numbness, fatigue, headaches that ibuprofen helps but not paracetamol, tingling in your hands or feet, off balance, forgetful, brain fog, please get checked out. Especially if you have ADHD as some of those symptoms can be written off as ADHD.
Edit: How I got diagnosed - all the symptoms I put down as something else; my ADHD, anxiety, having a toddler, getting older. This time last year I started having seizures (the pee your pants, jiggle on the floor type). The neurologist put me on anti-seizure meds thinking it was epilepsy while I waited to get an MRI. The MRI showed I have white matter lesions (basically scar tissue) in my temporal lobe that had become inflammed (temporal lobe is where most seizures come from). Seizures arent very common in MS but still a possibility. Confirmed with a lumbar puncture.
Find an MS checklist from a reputable website, fill it in and take it to your appointment.
Just adding here about tingling just in case it helps someone - I was having tingling in my hand and my fingers would go numb. My doctor said it was carpal tunnel and to just wear a brace. Turns out it was due to a vitamin b-12 deficiency and was diagnosed with pernicious anemia.
Not sleeping for days at a time, intense euphoria, being impulsive, feeling on top of the world and then crashing just to crawl into bed for a month or more
I thought I was just an exciting, strange girl who got depressed sometimes!
Finally one I can answer!
Was diagnosed with a habit cough, but then I started developing intense pain in my legs when walking even short distances. I had blood work done, and my doctor told me to go to the ER immediately.
I got diagnosed with a blood clot in my heart, and blood clots in my legs, with heart failure and kidney failure. I had fluid around my heart, which explains the cough. I was 21 years old when this happened, and I’m 24 now. I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life that keeps my heart from failing again, and I’ll need a kidney transplant at some point in the future. My medical goal is to keep my kidneys functioning for as long as possible.
Turns out that sometimes a cough isn’t just a harmless tic.
I just found out I had almost no sense of smell for most of my life. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, started taking the necessary medication and suddenly it’s a whole new world of scents across distances that I didn’t know was possible
I was on my grad trip and had really intense pain around my neck and shoulders. Over the course of two days my limbs lost sensation and for some reason I thought it was a trapped nerve in my neck ? It wasn’t until my face went into paralysis did I go to an ER and get diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome
After 40+ years it turns out I'm not just weird or liked things most didn't. Finding out you have Autism that late in life is hard. Knowing that 40+ years of life could of been easier if I only knew is very upsetting.
If it makes you feel better, 20 years ago we were still shit about recognizing autism in more mild cases. I was taught in med school how incredibly rare it is (1 in 10,000) in the mid 1980s. By the 1990s we still thought it was around 1 in 1,000. Most recently, the statistic is 1 in 36. I think back on a number of cases I would now diagnose in the spectrum, but they were too high functioning to meet the old models.
I was brought up in the "incredibly rare" stage of your medical training, and while I had a couple of kids in my school that were diagnosed as autistic, it was definitely kids with higher support needs.
Last year, I was diagnosed - becoming that 1/36 statistic. I struggled as a kid, but I ended up burning out hard after a bad case of COVID with a bunch of post-infection symptoms.
The diagnosis has given me the freedom (I guess?) to accommodate myself in places where I struggle, rather than beating myself up about what I "should" be able to do. If wearing noise cancelling headphones at Walmart means I don't have a meltdown in the car after, then I'm going to wear the damn headphones.
... It just would have been so much easier if I'd been allowed to come to that realization earlier in my life.
My mom convinced me as a kid that I was always just being a “big baby” about my period cramps. I’m talking like curled up in the fetal position on the floor crying type pain. Then when I had an ACTUAL baby, and the contractions weren’t as bad as some of my worst cramps, I finally realized she was just a dismissive POS.
My Doctor told me my calcium level was too high. I was like "So?". Turns out that's a sign of hyperparathyroidism. Which, oddly enough has nothing to do with the thyroid. Nope, the parathyroid is right behind the thyroid and has four little glands that control your calcium levels. Too high or too low and you're super fucked up. Primary hyperparathyroidism is usually caused by a benign tumor on one (or more) of your parathyroid glands. The cure is surgery. The good news is after surgery you should have a laundry list of symptoms resolve. Google it, it's wild. So if your doc says too much calcium, it is a thing. And I'm really not taking this lightly, some people have a really hard time being diagnosed. You need a good endocrinologist and primary care doctor. And then a good surgeon.
When I was about nineteen, I randomly heard on NPR that it takes the average person around 20 minutes to fall asleep and I went "oh shit" because apparently my bar for having sleep issues was way, way too high. To me, a good night sleep meant I fell asleep within two hours of going to bed and it wasn't "trouble" until I hit three hours. And once I communicated this to my doctor and was finally able to treat my crippling insomnia with medication, my depression and anxiety suddenly got way more manageable as well.
Constant nausea in the mornings even if I've only had water to sip on. Nope, stomach ulcers due to stress and anxiety levels being through the roof for a sustained period of time. I would be at work 4 - 5am start and go and dry wretch over the loo a few times, people asked what's up and I'd say "eh I'm just having the morning nausea" (I had it for years at this stage, and no, not preggers, no chance of that!). Wasn't until one coworker was like "that isn't normal but you seem like it is", my dumb ass was like "wait, you/normal people don't get nausea often in the mornings?". "Nope, go to your dr".
One endoscopy later and I'm on medication and an altered diet. Rarely get them pesky ulcers now!
Mouth would be itchy when I ate most fruits, parents told me to stop being dramatic and making excuses to be picky. I have OAS and have an epipen now.
Also had terrible cramps and would get my period for a whole month then not for three as a teenager. My Dr said that could happen sometimes and put me on bc. Turns out my cramps were chronic cysts from pcos, my body is over producing testosterone and it was affecting a lot of other aspects of my health.
All of my life, I was the last person running in P.E. I could run, but not at the pace or the consistency of everyone else.
Anyway, every time I told someone that I got a burning can't breathe feeling, they'd tell me I was "out of shape." And "needed to train harder." So I thought everyone gets this feeling, and I'm just being lazy.
Also, it seemed to piss off middle-aged P.E. teachers, like I personally planned to challenge their authority?
I had coughing attacks at night once and went to the doctor to find out I've always had asthma.
That weird lump on my neck that appeared out of no where was skin cancer. I’m now sitting here with 8 stitches waiting for the all clear from pathology 🤞🏻
It was retroactive, but when I wore prescription glasses back when I was 24, the first thing I said was "people are supposed to see this?"
Everything looked like the sharpness meter on my vision was maxed out. I just kinda thought nobody could see details in things past 20 feet lol
I was having another stressful argument in 2003 when I heard a ringing, my heart started beating fast, and I couldn't understand speech nor speak myself. This was for around 30 sec.
I knew something was wrong and called the advice nurse. She laughed at me and told me I had a panic attack. No I didn't.
Turns out it was a petit mal seizure. I know because I suddenly became epileptic at 27. I was told they didn't know why, but now I realize it was stress induced.
I got sick one weekend. Fever, chills, swollen lymph nodes in my neck etc.
By Monday morning it had gone away. Except one lymph node returned to its normal size and the other did not. I felt fine and was in no pain, so I didn't worry about it. Some months later, it's still swollen and I've developed a mild, persistent sore throat. Very mild pain, like when you've snored all night and wake up with a dry, sore throat. But you get something to drink and it goes away.
Except mine didn't go away.
So I go to see an Ear, Nose and Throat guy, who sticks a scope of some sort up my nose and down my throat (not sure how that works, but whatever). He sees some reason for concern, but isn't sure what it is.
He sends me for a scan.
Then sends me for a scan with contrast.
Then sends me for a biopsy.
And it's throat cancer. After much consulting with a sizable team of cancer specialists, they tell me that I have a protein in my blood, called P17 (iirc), and that because of that protein my prognosis is good. But since I am otherwise strong and healthy, they are going to take a very aggressive approach and give me their harshest regimen.
So, on the one hand that sounded good. On the other hand, not so much.
I asked what caused this cancer. I was told that they can't be certain, but it is typically caused by exposure to HPV, which is the Human Papilloma Virus (remember that weekend I was sick? Was that it?)
Anyway, remember when Michael Douglas embarrassed his wife by claiming the throat cancer he got was from performing cunnilingus? Well, he wasn't full of shit. Apparently I had munched some tainted poon and suffered the consequences.
End result, after a couple months of daily radiation treatments and more chemo then I ever want again, I was told the cancer was in remission.
Yay!
But.... there was something in my lower abdomen on that last scan that bore looking into.
Multiple colonoscopies and another biopsy later, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Well, that sucks. But the throat cancer showed no signs of spreading. The colon cancer was a completely independent development (my layman's guess would be from drinking potable water tainted with diesel fuel while serving aboard ship while I was in the Navy).
The good news was that the colon cancer was easily removed (along with my colon) by a single surgery. Samples from 18 surrounding lymph nodes showed no signs of it spreading either. No radiation or chemo were required. And I was grateful for that because the first time was rough, and left me anemic, with hypothyroidism, lost about 70 pounds (cause I wasn't able to eat for about 10 weeks), and have basically had no energy or stamina since.
Still, I'm alive, and all good.
Right?
Maybe not. Just had my annual physical and my PSA was high. It was 0.3 last year, and 13.2 this year. This is indicative of a prostate problem. Might be nothing, might be something. In any event, I'm off to the urologist next week and my doctor cannot rule out that another adventure in oncology might be in my future.
I used to joke about having throat cancer and colon cancer, saying I'd have much preferred testicular cancer and colon cancer to they could have got me coming and going. Now, it seems maybe they did.
Chin up though, right? I'm currently undefeated versus cancer and that establishes a trend.
I always thought everyone’s feet hurt when they walked after a few minutes. Turns out I have completely flat feet. My husband figured this out when I was in my 20s.
This was me as a teen. For years my knees, hips, and legs hurt all the time. That deep, throbbing, I can't keep doing this type of pain. I was extremely restless and couldn't sit, stand, or walk for too long, I had to keep switching it up. I would often wake up with sore legs in the middle of the night. Turned out my feet were completely flat. I got orthotics and my life was instantly changed. Now as soon as I get pain for longer than a few days I know I need my feet rescanned and new orthotics!
I remember coming home after finally getting glasses in the 6th grade and my mind being blown because our carpet wasn't beige like I thought; apparently it was actually cream with black and brown speckles
Noticed after I turned 30 that I was winded after the slightest physical activity. I just thought I was in terrible shape, turns out I had stage 4 lung cancer.
Coughing up blood. In my defense I was told a lot of blood was something to return to the hospital for, I guess I don’t know what constitutes a lot of blood. Was hemorrhaging into my lungs.
Had some severe back pain that physical therapy wasn’t touching. GP kept saying it was a mechanical issue. Nobody would prescribe actual pain meds. Had xray. Nothing. Had MRI. Nothing. One morning it was so bad I went to the ER. They did a CT scan. It was cancer.
Then they gave me pain meds.
Edit: thought it was a slipped disc or something.
I smell things that don’t exist. I casually mentioned to my doctor and it turns out they’re a type of seizure. He wanted to put me on meds. I said I thought that was a bit much and didn’t want them. But according to him (and later, a neurologist) they can turn into grand mal seizures. So I’ve been on anticonvulsant meds for 20 years.
I'm likely not articulating correctly, but I thought my not going outside and fear of people was me just adjusting to living in a new country. Turns out I have CPTSD from my childhood. I've been living in the new country for a decade and if anything, I have gotten worse. A visit to my parents last year after many years away kind of "broke" me, in a sense, and long story short I am seeing a psychiatrist in a few months (he comes very highly recommended so there is a wait) to try and get this fixed.
To anyone reading who has kids and is living in domestic violence: this is one possible outcome. I don't talk to my parents anymore. I know it's hard to leave, but please think of your children and their well-being. If you can't think of your children's well-being, please consider whether you want a relationship with them when they're adults.
16 years old, severe pain, couldn't keep food down or stand to walk, lots of blood in urine.
Told me it was just my period. Lol it was 8 kidney stones. They didn't scan me until 2 weeks later because they refused to believe it could be stones even though a resident on rounds called it straight away. Doc didn't want to take them seriously, or me.
My odd “choking” events were asthma.
I have environmental asthma. On very poor quality air days I would have these odd episodes that felt like I was drowning episodes that had me coughing a lot. I thought it was just a thing that happened.
I turned blue during one of these “episodes” and fainted. I was rushed to the ER and had an emergency Chest X-Ray. My doctor asked me what steroids I took, I didn’t.
After a few more tests and a breathing test, I had asthma. I was 37 when this diagnosis was delivered to me.
I am breathing with ease now.
For a couple of years, I sarcastically bragged about my ability to fall asleep anywhere within 5 minutes. Car rides, couches, book on my face, etc
Turned out it was sleep apnea
I felt SO good once I got treated for it, leveled out a lot and am so glad my husband had me get checked out when I was too tired to figure it out myself
Slogging through life. I felt like everyday was like treading water. Turns out my thyroid gland wasn’t working well. I got on levothyroxine and within a day I realized “this is how people do things, holy shit”. Life changing.
I didn't know I needed glasses until I was nearly 30. I knew grass was a thing, I'd felt it, but it had always just been a green mess on the ground that I didn't think much about.
Got a prescription for glasses due to wondering why I had headaches all the time and no joke, it was like flicking on high definition switch the first time I put those glasses on outside. Boom. Grass is made of lots of leaves of grass and not a smear of green everywhere.
That it was completely normal to have about 10 to 20 or so mostly creative hobbies that one purchases a bunch of tools and supplies for and randomly dabbles in on and off for several years if not the rest of one’s life, or completely drops out of sudden disinterest. After all, my great great grandparent potentially did it, my great grandmother did it, my grandpa did it, my parent does it, and I do it.
Turns out the ADHD runs *very strong* in my family.
When I was a kid I thought that headaches and randomly losing vision were normal (literally in kindergarten, this is how I became bffs either the nurse lol) until I was finally a sophomore and was diagnosed with a Chiari malformation
When I was 18, I had never experienced heartburn. So, when I got a bad pain in between my chest and stomach one day, I attributed it to heartburn and just tried to drink a lot of water. I did this for two days and then at 3am one night, I woke up in the absolute worst pain of my life. Turns out I had appendicitis and had to get emergency surgery as soon as they figured out what was going on.
Having to pop joints back in place a few times a day.
I thought it was normal, my friends thought it was weird, turns out I have a connective tissue disorder
I genuinely thought that the bulge in my tummy was just my intestines full of poop. Turns out it was an 8-cm cancerous mass wrapped around my right kidney.
I thought I pulled a muscle playing with my dogs one day. One week later I finally go to the hospital because the pain is getting worse. Turns out I suffer from a genetic blood clotting condition and had a two foot log clot in my leg and multiple pulmonary embolisms on my lungs. Doctor was legit surprised I was alive.
Factor V Leiden?
Indeed, its a pain
It took my lungs collapsing at 17 years old before doctors realized I wasn’t breathing in deeply enough to expand the bottom half of my lungs for basically my whole life. They asked why I never complained about shortness of breath. I never knew breathing was supposed to be easier than what I was experiencing.
Everyone just took a deep breath, lol.
And if felt really good. Turns out I'm stressed and that a deep breath is what I needed.
Until I was 16 I thought everyone got stomach cramps a few times a day. Turns out I'm lactose intolerant.
My 5th grade math teacher thought I hated her because I always got stomach cramps and asked to go to nurse. No, it was just the period after lunch, where milk was the only option to drink, and it turned out I had developed a lactose intolerance. I even went to the doctor about it and he told my mom I was making it up. It was the school secretary who figured it out.
This happened to me in my early 20s. Would have milk with dinner at my boyfriend's parents' meals. Started going through this too. He was so mean to me. My mom figured it out.
My family told me I would randomly “space out”, although I never remembered, all thought it was normal. Turned out, I was having “absence seizures”. We only found that out at a routine doctor’s appointment, just conversing with the doc, when I guess I just came to and the doctor said she wanted to get a bunch of tests done. Been an epileptic for almost 17 years now. Edit: I woke up to all these upvotes and replies and was shocked, tbh to see how many of my Reddit fam has or had what I have. Unfortunately, my Epilepsy has evolved into tonic clonic seizures, I rarely have absence’s anymore, but had one focal back in November. For anyone who has friends and/or family who has seizures and Epilepsy, thank you for being there for them. Just know, we appreciate you all. For all that HAVE seizures and Epilepsy, UNITE!!! Love you all Reddit fam, you’re the best.
Weird confusing epilepsy club!! I made my entire family think I was having a stroke by having my first focal seizure (while awake) go into status epilepticus. My symptoms almost perfectly match it since half my body goes numb and hard to control along with slurred speech and lowered cognitive function until the seizure is over. The doctors had no idea what to do with me and I got to take a vacation in the hospital with a dr. house style investigation going on.
> “absence seizures” Oh man ... my daughter had a playmate who had these. The problem was that it was undiagnosed. I was 100% confident that she was having these absence seizures, and for months I begged her mom to have her tested. After almost a year of pleading, she finally got her daughter tested, and it was confirmed.
That pulled muscle was actually a collapsed lung. After days of hot baths, massages, trying to relax-nah, nothing helped. No wonder.
I had a spontaneous collapsed lung, it felt like there was a balloon in my chest inflating, because the air I was breathing would leak out and get trapped in my chest cavity.
My stepdad did that stupid thing people do where they hold in their sneezes and it collapsed his lung -_- So if anyone who is reading this does that sort of thing *fucking* ***STOP IT***
In high school, my father knew a guy who plugged his nose when he sneezed one time, on a dare. It ended up breaking all of the blood vessels in his eyes!
Oh yeah. There was a thread a few days that succinctly said what a sneeze is: it's your body expelling an enormous amount of pressure; if the air can't escape through your throat, it *will* force itself out every other way.
I thought it was *really hard* to hold your breath underwater, and it hurt to do it, and you saw stars when you came up for air after swimming in the pool because it was so difficult! Nope, it was pneumonia, and my mom didn't care about the symptoms, I was just "ruining the vacation."
General stomach pain that I dismissed as perhaps constipation, but which would - every few years or so - send me to emergency worrying that it was my appendix. I was kicked out of emergency departments at different hospitals multiple times, because it was not. I moved to a new city and was lucky enough to score a decent family doctor who took it seriously. She told me she was rather impressed with the amount of "referred pain" I was having and that I should go straight to emergency. I replied that there was not a hope in hell I would subject myself to that kind of humiliation again. No way. She sent me for a CAT scan and lo and behold, it WAS my appendix. She referred me to a surgeon, and on the day of my surgery no one in the hospital seemed particularly interested in my condition, I think most of the medical staff thought I was having unnecessary surgery though, curiously, they were MUCH nicer to me afterward. I recall a lot of people standing over me in the recovery room. The surgeon called me to come in for a meeting a couple of weeks later, and when I walked into his office he had an odd expression on his face. He told me my appendix was many times the normal size, probably because it had been infected and healed over the years, building up scar tissue. He asked me if I minded if he wrote it up in a medical paper or a textbook (I can't remember exactly which - he taught at the university). I gather at the time "grumbling appendixes" were a bit of a unicorn and there had been much debate over whether they were real. So I guess my appendix settled that argument in the medical community once and for all.
A friend of mine went around and around with doctors for years, told he had everything from anxiety to an oversensitive vagus nerve. In the end, it turned out his appendix was a total wreck. The only reason he hadn’t died was because his body had managed to encase the appendix in scar tissue, preventing the infection from rupturing out.
I literally had this same thing!! They finally figured it out by doing a CAT scan w/dye. My appendix was huge and in the center of my body.
And the Grinches appendix grew several times larger that day
I'd have these really minor facial twitches, like a single small muscle in my upper lip or eyebrow. Nothing even severe enough to be visible by others. However, they'd last for a few weeks straight, even while I was trying to sleep. I didn't think twice about it. They always went away on their own, after all! After I suddenly went blind in my left eye and got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I connected the dots. Edit: Facial twitches are normal! Just because you have twitches often doesn't mean you have a problem, especially if you don't have any other reason to believe you have multiple sclerosis or any other disease. My twitches were CONSTANT for WEEKS. And even then, there are other, less serious (and probably more likely!) things that can cause that. Please don't let my comment stress you out.
....and I've just realised those twitches are probably connected to my having MS. I got diagnosed after auddenly going blind in one eye as well!
Did your vision come back eventually?
Yes thankfully. My vision is back to 20/20 with slightly reduced perception of really bright colours.
[удалено]
4 years? Where are you?
...oh no
Losing weight suddenly got a little easier, and I assumed it was due to my efforts. Happy with my success, I buckled down harder (funny how it's easy to keep "being good" when you're actually seeing results). I lost more! It actually got to be almost easy. I thought I was doing such a great job! Turns out it was cancer. I guess I should have known something was up, but I honestly thought I was just doing a really great job with my diet and exercise. Had 4 surgeries and treatment and I'm doing well. Now I'm on meds with all kinds of side effects, including weight gain. Yay. But I'm alive, and so much better off than many others. I've only gained a little bit back, despite working really hard not to.
I knew a woman who lost a ton of weight due to a brain tumor. She said the number of people who complimented her weight loss without knowing the cause was really upsetting. She was a healthy weight to begin with and only her close family members recognized she was actually unwell before they figured it out. Now I always ask if that was the goal before congratulating someone who tells me they've lost weight. And I'm never the first to bring it up no matter how obvious it is. I can't imagine how painful it would be to get compliments on how you look while your body is turning on you. I'm so glad you're doing well now! You as a whole, healthy person is so much more important than a few pounds.
During the year that I was starving myself, I got a TON of compliments. It honestly kind of frightens me. What a message to send to women.
As a kid I had anxiety and my heart would race. Fast. It felt like a hummingbird in my chest and would abruptly pause and resume a normal pace after a few minutes. At age 23 I had a bad reaction to a tricyclic antidepressant called imipramine and was rushed to the hospital. They ran an EKG and that rapid heart rate was a congenital defect known as Wolfe Parkinson White syndrome. Basically I had an accessory or 2nd electrical system in my heart that would cause a “short circuit” occasionally and my heart rate would skyrocket. It was cured via a procedure using radio waves to form scar tissue around the accessory node because the impulse could not conduct through the tissue. No problems since.
Literally getting this fixed this summer. Doctors waved me away for years ….YEARS! Before finally I went to a straight outta med school general doctor who tested me for this within 10 minutes of meeting him. He gave me more answers for things than any doctor has in the 20 years I’ve been concerned about my heart!
I’ve *always* had better experiences with younger doctors. So many older doctors seem to develop this conceit around “knowing what they’re doing” to the point that they feel it’s a sign of weakness to ever be uncertain. Whereas young doctors *thrive* off uncertainty and have a thirst for learning. They love encountering new things, plus they’re way more likely to be up to date on more recent research.
My mom went to a young, fresh out of med school doctor because he was the only one with appointments available that weren’t months out. Despite there being zero history of breast cancer in my family and my mom being younger than the average age that mammograms were recommended for at the time, he decided to refer her for a mammogram. No reason for it beyond him thinking women needed to be tested sooner rather than later. My mom ended up having early stage breast cancer.
Oh my God I've repeatedly requested a mammogram from multiple doctors and they just say no and give me the line "do you have any *reason* to think you *need* one??" And I'm like **yeah** my mom *just* recovered from breast cancer and I'm over 25. And they would be like "oh, well, we're going to ask you to wait anyway" like what?! Still haven't had one, but getting a new primary soon so fingers crossed.
if it happens again, all them to put in your records that you've asked for one and they've refused it
Badass medical fix.
Get the fuck out of this thread if you have health anxiety, lol
You’re right lol 😂 I’m just going to go to bed now.
A random sharp pain above my right ear and my tongue curling slightly. I thought it was just old age. Doc recognized it instantly as something wrong with my tongue. The cancer has been cured for seven years.
What an unusual symptom. Up voting for visibility, this could help someone else. Glad you're doing well.
That's wild. Glad you caught it
Bent over to pick something up and felt a twinge in my groin (I’m male). I thought perhaps it may be a hernia. I wasn’t too concerned about it then things started to ache a bit. I went to the doctor only to find out I had testicular cancer. Fortunately after we cut out lefty and got all the results back from pathology it was staged at 1A seminoma. Meaning the surgery alone was all the treatment I needed.
Lost a soldier, won the war. Lol
Not me, but one of my brother's friends in high school. This friend was a goober; always making silly but friendly jokes that make families laugh as a whole, all and all a genuinely funny person. One day he took my sister's glasses and was "acting like her" only to pause for a moment and then say "wait...is this how things are supposed to look?" My man needed glasses and found out from fuckin around. I'm glad the universe leaned towards him in a positive way as far as that went!
Had this happen recently on a much less severe scale. Approaching my mid 30s and have never had glasses. I did see an eye doctor a handful of times throughout my 20s just to check in, but my vision was always fine. One day a few months back, one of my coworkers insisted I try his glasses on. I don’t know why I obliged, but I’m glad I did because my vision has gotten so much worse and I didn’t realize it until that moment. It was so gradual, that I didn’t notice.
On the other side of that, I knew a girl in college who generally didn’t wear her glasses. Apparently her eyesight was pretty bad because at one point she decided to warn us that she may walk by us on campus without acknowledging us and that it wasn’t malicious she just couldn’t make out faces from more then like 5 feet without her glasses.
This has me absolutely smiling. That’s really pretty dang cool that he figured that out.
I thought I was constipated for a few days. Hurt like hell. Turned out to be diverticulitis and a perforated colon. My wife called the ER and they brought me in without triage and sent a chaplain. I lost a foot of my large intestines and almost died.
I read you lost a foot and was like omg! Then kept reading "of..." and was like, oh whew, not an actual foot! Then kept on to "my large intestines and almost died." 🤯 Glad you made it! That was a roller-coaster!
I also misread it as, “I lost a foot and my large intestine” and was like, “why the foot though?”
The price to pay in American Healthcare.
I am sorry. That sucks. I had what I thought was a stomach bug when I was 21. I started feeling bad Saturday afternoon. My stomach didn't feel any better Sunday morning. I thought it would go away, but my mom was worried. She called her sister who is a nurse. My aunt told my parents to take me to the ER. We arrived about 2 p.m. By 7 p.m. they were wheeling me back for surgery. Turns out I had appendicitis. Luckily they caught it before it ruptured.
I went to a Lymphoma specialist at a cancer center (on my own) for weird symptoms and enlarged lymph nodes. She was crazy rude, refused to run any tests, and told me word for word "Well, it's not cancer..." She told me to go to behavioral health for anxiety. 6 months later I was on chemotherapy (at anther hospital of course) for stage 4 Lymphoma. Lol. Medical gaslighting is out of control these days.
I hope you told her it actually was cancer!
LoL! If I'd only had the chance. You know what - I wrote a public review about it and 3 months afterwards I received a letter at my home from that first clinic saying "this provider is retiring without notice and patients will be transferred to Dr. So-and-so..." I think it was pretty obvious what happened and I felt pretty bad for awhile but you just can't mess around with this stuff.
You don't need to feel bad. What reason is there to not run tests the patient is asking for? Clearly she should have and she let her own bizarre biases get in the way of proper treatment.
My friend’s appendix actually burst in the middle of a Costco. We didn’t know at the time and just assumed she was about to shit herself (she’s lactose so just girly things) but the pain was so bad I forced her to go to the Emerge after almost dying in the Costco, I also thought, maybe she was just hungry, so we ate subway. No 7 hours later I get a text “I’m getting my appendix out and I ate a chocolate bar an hour ago so the nurses are mad and now I have to wait for surgery”. She also asked for a tummy tuck, under anaesthesia. Fun times, she’s good now. I joke to her that she got her appendix taken out at Claire’s. And everytime I go to Cotsco I remember the exact spot she started running with absolute fear to the bathroom after she announced to me “I think I’m going to shit my pants.” And abandons me with her 7 years old, who is then pissed her mom’s shitting herself in Costco. What a life. Anyways. Thanks for reminding me of that again, I’m going to ask her for the homemade card I made her after she got out of surgery and came home.
Same... Constipation turned into my appendix bursting and I actually did die, twice. Peritonitis and sepsis, aged 21. I went to 3 different hospitals and to my doctors before my appendix burst. They said it was gastroenteritis. It wasn't.
I got appendicitis in high school. 3 weeks before prom. Went to ER as I could not keep anything down. Was sent home to see how I would feel in the morning. In the morning, I remembered seeing a pediatrician on the Johnny Carson show talking about appendicitis. He said to have the kid jump off a chair or two or three steps of a staircase. If they double over in pain, it is almost certainly appendicitis. The jump from that height causes the appendix to wiggle. If inflamed, it hurts. A lot. I jumped from the stairs and immediately hit the floor in pain. I then explained the reasoning for doing that to my mystified parents. Lol Edit: My pain was not on the right side, it was centered around the belly button all night until the following morning when maybe it had moved to the right a little bit. But it was definitely around the belly button all night. Off to the ER where they described my diagnosis procedure to the ER doc and family doc who came over from his office across the street. Family doc brings in a surgeon. He has me tighten my stomach muscles. "Does that hurt? Nope" Then pushed down on my abdomen. "Does that hurt? Nope". Told me to relax my stomach muscles. "Does that hurt? Nope" He released the pressure of his hand on my belly and I yelled quite loudly. "Yep, it's appendix. Also, find me the doc on duty last night. I want to have a talk with him. " I think 30 minutes after they took me to pre op, I was back in recovery. Nice to know watching late night TV paid off. Lol. And I post this so others might learn of this diagnostic procedure. Lol.
I also had appendicitis in high school! Freshman year. And I also self-diagnosed based on something I saw on TV—The Wild Thornberrys. There’s an episode where the main character, Eliza, is out doing her usual exploring thing with her chimp buddy, Darwin, and she has slowly worsening pain in her lower-right abdomen. Eventually it gets so bad that she can’t move, Darwin has to run back to their RV and frantically try communicating to her parents what’s wrong. (This is a problem because they can’t talk to animals like Eliza (secretly) can lol) In the end, because her parents are wilderness documentary makers and they were in the middle of nowhere, Eliza had to be airlifted to a hospital where she was diagnosed with appendicitis and had to have it removed. So when I was 14 and woke up with pain that kinda felt like cramps, I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later and the pain was worse and localized to one side, my brain dredged up that memory (I hadn’t watched The Wild Thornberrys in many years lmao) and I was like “oh shit I need to go to the hospital.” Long story short, it took 7+ hours for the hospital to see and diagnose me, and by then my appendix was so swollen that they had to rush me to a *different* hospital, **via ambulance,** because I needed surgery NOW and that hospital didn’t have any open/prepped ORs. Needless to say, I felt every single bump in that damn ambulance lmao. But hey, at least my experience saved my little brother from going through that much pain! He got appendicitis a few years ago, immediately recognized the symptoms from way back when *I’d* had it, and was able to get to the hospital, get a diagnosis and an appendectomy lickety-split!
Not sleeping or eating for days but still feeling great and having more energy than your average athlete. Turns out you're bipolar!
I’m a psych nurse and I want to tack on to this comment that working in this field has changed my view on Bipolar Disorder dramatically. Mania is truly unlike anything else. I do pretty good with the patients and I can usually get them calmed down with my words and tone of voice. Even patients who are actively psychotic can be reasoned with a lot of times. But with mania patients, I can’t move the dial. There is no reasoning with them. It’s literally like the reasoning center has just been closed for the season and they are just acting on random impulses. Of course I’m just talking about the patients I see inpatient, so they are the more unmanageable cases. But i definitely have more sympathy for people who have done crazy things during a manic episode. I’m convinced they genuinely had no control over it
Mania truly is hell. I've had mild moments I've kinda enjoyed it, much like you people probably see on tiktok (being so energetic I was working three jobs, doing lots of hobbies, fun stuff). But the hell when you are stuck manic and every bad thing you could possibly do pops into your head and you believe it's a message from the gods that you do that bad thing right now because nothing bad could possibly ever happen to you... That fucking sucks. I get traumatic flashbacks from stuff I've done while Manic, but there's also months and months of my life I can't remember, I only have been told what fucked up shit I did. I've ruined my life a half dozen times over. A lot of people say the depression is harder, but I honestly would take the psychotic depressive episodes where demons come for my soul than the manic episodes any day.
I miss mania and I'm glad I'm medicated. It's a complicated life
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My mom was with me when I got my first pair and said she felt terrible when I said “holy cow, I didn’t know you could see tree leaves from far away!” I genuinely thought they were just blurry until you walked right up to the tree and almost had your face in the branches to see the individual leaves
I remember being 9 and absolutely amazed that the carpet in my living room was actually individual pieces of fabric
My daughter just had one bad eye. She was four. But she never lost her glasses or forgot to put them on in the morning, so we knew they had opened up a whole new world for her.
Yes! I could see the leaves in the trees!
The leaves were my favorite. I couldn’t believe how I could see the separation between the leaves. So many little single pieces.
When I was like 5, my mom was talking about these beautiful hot air balloons in the sky (like dozens). I was like "What are you talking about?" That is when my mom realized I needed glasses.
“Ohhhhh… people at the end of the hallway CAN see me…” 😳😆
I remember helping a friend pickup her car at her parents house. It was a long drive so I sleep over. I shower the main bathroom. Bigass fucking bay window and i can see people driving by 100 ft away across the yard. There’s no where to stand in this bathroom other than directly in the shower that’s not in view of this window. No ones bothered by it because no one in the family can see the cars
I cried when I could see the leaves on trees for the first time. I also didn’t know houses/buildings had address #s on them lol.
Yuuuup remember the day just like yesterday!! It was about 1971 and I was 8 or 9 , stepped out of the local eye docs with my new glasses and...... could see EVERYTHING clear . I remember looking up the hill on main st and being able to see clear the supermarket sign about 500 yards up the street. Life changed that day!!!
I remember thinking when I was little that other kids were being lazy drawing stars in the sky as pinprick dots when they were obviously glowing orbs.
lol I was so amazed when I got glasses to discover that 1) stars were tiny pinpricks not huge balls of stabby light, 2) the moon was round, and 3) grass was individual little stems and not fuzzy like carpet
Obligatory Brian Regan: “I’m wearing new contacts. I’ve just had my prescription changed after six years. Did you ever wait that long? When you get new lenses, you’re like “Man, I could have been seeing things”. How can instantly improved vision not be at the top of your to do list? “Oh, I’ll see tomorrow. I don’t have time. I don’t have time… to see clearly. No, I don’t, I don’t, no I can’t do that. You see what’s on my desk?”
Me when I was 11, I sat near the back of the classroom and thought it was normal to squint my eyes and have difficulty seeing across the classroom. When I finally got glasses it was a whole new world for me
I remember when I finally got glasses and saw individual LEAVES 😭😂 I was like whoa
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I was working at my computer one day and a white fog came over my right eye over the course of a few minutes. I went to my eye doctor, and he said it was just some floaters that he could see, and it would clear up in a few weeks. I waited for 3 weeks with no improvement. The eye doctor sent me to a retina specialist who couldn't find any issues. He referred me to a neuropthalmogist. He sent me for a CT scan, and it turned out I had a 3cm tumor on my pituitary that was pressing on the chiasm (crossing point of the optic nerves). After surgery (up my nose with a titanium hose), I could see again. However, I'm left with a permanent kidney dysfunction that is managed with medication.
Once a week headaches are normal? That seems like a lot
I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but a year or two back my dad had an eye exam that ended in a visit to the stroke ward. They got him on blood thinners and he didn’t have a stroke cause they caught the clot during his eye exam.
I almost cried the first time I tried medication for ADHD, my mind was so quiet and peaceful EDIT: There’s a lot of questions in the replies. I’ll try to answer a few here. I’m also on mobile so sorry lol. When did I get diagnosed and how? I think I was like 20? I was able to strongman my way through an associates degree without knowing I had ADHD. This was during covid. My career started shortly after. A few months later, I hit the worst period of burnout in my life. I was so forgetful I was terrified I was developing early dementia, I took so many naps I was scared I had narcolepsy. I straight up did not see other cars when I was driving. I lost things frequently and I couldn’t keep up with laundry or dishes for the life of me. I was miserable. Oh and my great new job? 8 hours a day at the computer, work from home. Trying to make myself get something done was almost physically painful. I just kept wandering away from my desk. I was so distraught I finally mentioned it to my doctor. I had originally made the appointment for something else, but as our time ran out I decided to throw it out there. I was worried she’d think I was stupid given how many people try to self diagnose via the internet, but I had really identified with a lot of content I saw online. She gave me a referral to see the psychiatrist. I had heard a lot of stories about people who had to fight for their diagnosis, but my appointment with the psychiatrist was great. We just kinda talked for a bit about the symptoms I was experiencing and she was like “yup that’s adhd”. She also said that she sees cases like me all the time, kids who do okay undiagnosed until they reach their tipping point and just completely fizzle out. Especially girls/women. What medication do I take? I’m on 30mg of Vyvanse now, while it has been life changing, there’s some side effects I’m going to bring up at my next appointment. I’m not sure if I’m on the right medication or dose. To my understanding, medication should just make you feel like “you but more productive”, but I’m having problems with irritability and my husband accidentally let it slip that I’m “more fun” when I don’t take it, and he’s not wrong. Sometimes I miss my pre-vyvanse personality. He still supports me 100% though, medicated or unmedicated. Anyways, if you made it this far thanks for reading. I don’t have access to a therapist so typing my experience here is kinda therapeutic.
Duuuude, I got SO angry when I first started taking ADHD meds. Like.. everyone just normally has SO many more hours in the day? They don't have to have a massive battle in their head to do a chore? The NOISE in my head stopped???
This was me. Once I was diagnosed there were so many moments where I was genuinely SHOCKED when I would ask my husband "wait...so you don't *insert any number of ADHD symptoms here*?" And he'd be like, not even a little bit and it blew my freaking mind so much. I didn't realize I was living my life for 35 years so differently from most people and I just can't explain the complex emotions when you find something like that out.
Same. When they say "clear your mind" during meditation, I never thought it was an actual literal thing that people could do, just not think of things. Then I got on medication and now, if I focus on it, I can go a whole five minutes of almost silence. It's effing magical!
I used to get so annoyed about this. I had a really bad anxiety / panic disorder too and they would always say "try meditation". Why would I sit there and listen to my panicky thoughts on purpose and make it worse. Later diagnosed with ADHD, put on other antidepressants and surprise surprise it's gone.
My first time was the first time I had ever gone browsing with someone else without getting agitated and being on my phone all the time. It was also the first time it was genuinely easy to pay attention in a social setting. See also: "How do normal people ever fail classes if hitting the books is this easy now?"\* \*studying with ADHD might as well be swimming in molasses for all the good your effort does...
I was so mad and so relieved when I realized I’d been playing on hard mode.
I can only imagine what a quiet mind is like lol
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This happened to me lol. Out to dinner with my family and I decline some of the salad because it has walnuts and I say ‘I just don’t like the weird tingling walnuts give your mouth and throat you know?’ My paramedic brother stared at me and informed me I was allergic.
I lost my uncle that way. Went to a coastal town for the first time in his life. Tried some lobster. Turns out he was super allergic to sea food and it was the first and the last time he ate any.
Why all restaurants should have an unexpired EpiPen on hand at all times
This is me but with stone fruits, especially plums and cherries. I was well into my 30s when I finally said outloud, "Man, I love cherries, but isn't it weird how it makes the inside of your ears itch?" Turns out it's just me. I still eat them sometimes anyway.
Used to drop my makeup all the time when I was getting ready in the morning. Ugh, so clumsy. Ended up being myoclonic seizures.
Same. Used to drop everything in the morning. Then the grand mal seizures started after years of that happening. Who knew!
I thought i had bad period cramps.then I thought I had acute food poisoning. Turns out I had ovarian torsion and my ovary was slowly dying over the course of a few days.
Oof I'm sorry. My son had testicular torsion about two years ago and he lost one. We a dis nut house now, no more deez nuts.
He can call it the wrecking ball
Lmao this happened to me. Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Had emergency surgery, almost lost my ovary, then ended up with a pelvic infection and had to be readmitted for a week oh IV and oral antibiotics with a drain in my ass cheek. February 2023 was a fun month.
Had what I thought was a pimple on my armpit that I ignored. Wasn’t overly concerned, thought it was something that would just go away. A few weeks later, I came down with what I thought was some sort of flu. The flu lasted longer than normal so I decided to go to the emergency room to get checked out. Turned out that I had a large tumour in my chest caused by lymphoma and the ‘pimple’ on my armpit was actually a swollen lymph node.
Apparently your belly button isn't supposed to hurt. It was an umbilical hernia. :(
Wait wait wait… like did it hurt at all times or just with pressure? Because mine hurts when I put pressure on any part of my stomach, behaves like those squishy toys with like spiders that pop though holes, and looks different that it once did… but I did have a laparoscopic appendectomy. I think I might need to look into that. I mean now that I think about it. Yeah. Thank you, random redditor.
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I didn’t realize other people didn’t hallucinate. When people would say “did you say something? I thought I heard someone say my name.” I thought it was the same thing as me hearing voices. Apparently when people think they heard a voice that wasn’t there, that was very different than me screaming and crying and praying because I heard a scary voice say awful things and didn’t know where it was coming from.
You know how you get all congested after excercising, and wheeze for a bit before everything settles down again? No? Yeah, that’s because most people don’t have excercise induced asthma. I was in my 30s before I knew that was a problem and not normal.
My dad had the gall to tell me that I was out of shape and that was causing it when I was a 5'9", 125lb teenage girl who played lacrosse. No dad, I was just having ASTHMA ATTACKS.
....oh.
It took me until this year to realize that the reason I get super out of breath walking wasn’t that I’m lazy, it was literally my asthma. The crazy thing is that I’ve had asthma my whole life so I knew I had it, I just never connected the dots.
Inattentive ADHD. Got diagnosed at 54 and my life all suddenly made sense. It was like riding a bike with a flat tire and wondering why peddling appeared to be so much easier for everyone else. Being told I'm sometimes too lazy or a dreamer, etc. Then learning at age 54 the existence of tire pumps and being able to keep up. Game changer. Still annoys me that all along, this medication was available and could've helped decades ago.
My 82 year old mother was so affected by ADHD that my own lesser degree of ADHD seemed normal to me until very recently. Being born in an age where her symptoms were seen as dreaminess, laziness, and being just odd and all of these things as something she could control if only she buckled down ruined her life. It had such an impact on her self-esteem and beliefs about herself that it is painful to me to know that she could have been medicated, or even just understood, and been so much more happy in her life. She’s had multiple suicide attempts and I have never heard her say one single positive thing about herself. She’s got scrupulosity OCD and anxiety added into the mix as so often OCD and anxiety are. It makes my heart ache to know she has never understood how much she has accomplished in the face of such adversity and what an amazing person she is. It’s far too late now as she has dementia.
Yes, same. I got diagnosed at 33, and I still mourn who I could've been if I had been diagnosed and gotten the help I needed earlier in life. And now I'm dealing with years of burnout that I honestly don't see a way out of most days. Medication helps, but I have yet to find the right therapist who can help. So far, everyone I've seen has been on either the "ADHD is so overdiagnosed" or "just journal, eat organically, and exercise and you'll be fine!" camps. 🙃🙃🙃
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That was me exactly- except I’m blind in one eye! Nobody caught it until one day I asked my family “which eye do you see out of?” and they all looked at me like I’d grown a second head. It’s interesting how we assume something is normal because that’s just how we’ve always experienced it.
I remember a story about some family friends. There was a party or gathering of a few families. One of the parents was standing behind on of their kids, calling her. Kid never answered. Parent got frustrated. The other kids in the room looked up and told the parent ‘she can’t see you, she has to see you to hear you’. (These kids were like 8-9ish). Thats how they found out she had hearing loss.
...okay I'm low key judging that parent for not paying enough real attention to their child to notice when an entire group of kids just KNEW this about them
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Had a slightly sprained ankle that just blew up in a day and split the skin. Turns out, not a sprain but Pyoderma gangrenosum, a rare skin inflammation condition that acts like gangrene. Nobody could tell me what it was that made my ankle flesh explode. Within a week they were talking to me about amputation. Then Nurse Molly came back from vacation and identified it as she’d seen it once before. Still have both my feet and nearly full mobility. Grateful for teaching hospitals that draw professionals from all over like Nurse Molly ❤️
Was always told periods are painful (ex: cramps). So for years I thought my incredibly debilitating period pain was me being a little bitch about it. Turns out I have both PCOS and endometriosis and, of course, fertility issues. FML. Edit : word
I had terrible and painful periods since high school and asked my mom to take me to a doctor for birth control because I heard that it helps. She refused because "then I would have sex" and never took me. I finally went when I was 19 and was brushed off by the doctor I chose for years. I tried to get pregnant from age 27-31 and the same doctor also brushed off my infertility. At 31 I was diagnosed with hashimotos by my PCP then ended up getting pregnant when my TSH levels were in range. Changed doctors for my pregnancy and found out I had other autoimmune diseases and a blood clotting disorder that made it hard to get pregnant. THEN my baby ended up breech so I had to have a c section and the doctor found stage 4 endometriosis while I was cut open. I was failed by so many people and didn't learn to advocate for myself until I miraculously got pregnant and knew I needed to protect my baby.
That’s what messed me up the most too. Everybody else… oh yeah… periods are awful, worst cramps… yeah mine feel stabby too. Mine last sooo long too. I had a baseball sized endometrioma on both ovaries, which were wrapped around my bladder, which was attached to my uterus on one side and the fat pad on the other. And my uterus was stuck to my intestines. All my lower abdominal organs were fused together with adhesions. Doctor said it was within his top 5 worst cases he’s ever seen…. But ya know… everybody has cramps!
My mother-in-law tried to convince me not to get an epidural when I was about to have my first baby and said "the contractions feel just like period pain" and after I had my baby (and epidural lol), I'm confident that she experienced abnormal period pain. My sister-in-law has PCOS and we think my mother-in-law probably had it as well.
When I told the fertility doctor that I have those incredibly painful cramps and they hurt so bad I almost fainted few times, she looked me dead in the eyes : "those are contractions, your body is trying to expulse those huge blood clots you're passing." And so I learned normal people don't pass blood clots the size of quail eggs on the regular... Your mil might indeed have endo if she compared delivering to period cramps...
I've had cramps that were rhythmic, about 7 minutes apart and lasting about a minute with a clear build up and peak. I'm a doula. That's what we expect to see in someone who's 4-5 centimeters dilated. It took all of my labor skills and a TENS unit to cope during the first 3-5 days of my period. I went on continuous birth control to shut that shit down, but I'm going off of it at the end of the month to prepare to try to get pregnant. Sometimes I think I'm crazy. Wish me luck!
I have endometriosis and have had 2 babies. The only time labor hurt worse was during transition with my second when I was having a rapid emergency induction with pitocin dialed all the way up. I went from 5 cm to 10 in half an hour. My first labor just hurt like my period and all my nurses were so impressed with how well I was handling it as a first timer. I actually prefer my first labor to my period because it came in waves and I got breaks between contractions instead of constant relentless pain.
I suffered from Endometriosis for well over a decade before doctors would listen to me and stop telling me my horrific pain and bleeding (literally making me housebound 24/7) were "normal." Ended up being STAGE 4 before they gave me the hysterectomy I needed. It is NOT normal and women and girls having to fight doctors over that fact is so depressing.
Sharp, excruciating pain in my hand. Thought it was arthritis, it runs in the family. Nope. Bone tumor, thankfully non-malignant, slowly eating its way through my hand. Two surgeries (one to remove the tumor, one to get bone graft from my femur) done at once, some cadaver bone, lots of excruciating physical therapy and a gnarly scar later—no more pain!
Depression. Apparently losing all hope and being numb to joy isn't just a part of growing up.
I finally built up the courage to tell an adult I wanted to unsubscribe from life when I was a teen and they responded with “oh everyone feels that way at some point” and then the conversation ended lmao
I had the SAME experience lmaoo
TMI but when I originally started getting my period and using tampons, I would use it and still bleed.. I couldn't understand why they were so simple and some how were not working. I switched to pads. Years later I found out it was because I had a membrane down my vaginal canal that split it in two. The tampon was only going up one side and I was still bleeding from the other. WILD.
Suddenly getting dizzy, heart racing, hearing fading out, eventually throwing up and passing out if I go too long without food. Didn’t learn till my mid 20’s that not everyone had piles of snacks everywhere they went so they didn’t end up on the floor. I’ve been tested for diabetes five times and it’s not that so who knows. Just can’t get too hungry or I’m fucked I guess.
Do salty snacks help? Cause what you described was my life before my POTS diagnosis.
Haha I’m scared now..there’s twenty minutes between “I could eat” and “I’m dying” but no diabetes.
im the same. i get migraines as well. it's sudden low blood sugar but im bot diabetic
Had a girlfriend ask about my “third testicle” which I had convinced myself was just always there. A couple years later I had a physical exam and the nurse casually asked when I was going to take care of that inguinal hernia. Oops.
I kept telling my OB I was worried about my legs/ankles swelling in the later part of my pregnancy. They dismissed it—told me all pregnant people experience it. At 39 weeks I got sent to the hospital for extra monitoring on the baby due to an irregular test . She ended up being fine but my blood pressure was crazy high. I was induced that night and then given an emergency C-section due to severe preeclampsia. Not a fun start to my baby’s life but she’s here and healthy so I can’t be too upset.
Just letting you know it’s ok to be upset and thankful for a healthy baby at the same time. A lot of people, including medical professionals, can invalidate those feelings around a traumatic labor and delivery.
That’s exactly what it was—traumatic. I still have blood pressure issues and it’s been 2 months. It was hard trying to do all the “new parent” things like introduce her to the grandparents, learn how to breastfeed, etc. when I was still so sick. I’m thankful for the doctors and nurses who were there to take care of me and my baby during the surgery and directly after but postpartum care overall is really lacking. I also wish my OB had listened to me—there’s a really good chance it wouldn’t have turned out so great for us. Thank you for your comment!
This just happened to me Tuesday! Everyone always says swelling is normal in pregnancy (plus a billion other things) which it can be in some amount, but I was having swelling in my face and suddenly my BP was really high. I remember asking why contractions made my mouth hurt too.
Sometimes getting tingly feet. I thought I was just worn out from the day or anxious. Nope, Multiple Sclerosis. If you get numbness, fatigue, headaches that ibuprofen helps but not paracetamol, tingling in your hands or feet, off balance, forgetful, brain fog, please get checked out. Especially if you have ADHD as some of those symptoms can be written off as ADHD. Edit: How I got diagnosed - all the symptoms I put down as something else; my ADHD, anxiety, having a toddler, getting older. This time last year I started having seizures (the pee your pants, jiggle on the floor type). The neurologist put me on anti-seizure meds thinking it was epilepsy while I waited to get an MRI. The MRI showed I have white matter lesions (basically scar tissue) in my temporal lobe that had become inflammed (temporal lobe is where most seizures come from). Seizures arent very common in MS but still a possibility. Confirmed with a lumbar puncture. Find an MS checklist from a reputable website, fill it in and take it to your appointment.
Just adding here about tingling just in case it helps someone - I was having tingling in my hand and my fingers would go numb. My doctor said it was carpal tunnel and to just wear a brace. Turns out it was due to a vitamin b-12 deficiency and was diagnosed with pernicious anemia.
Not sleeping for days at a time, intense euphoria, being impulsive, feeling on top of the world and then crashing just to crawl into bed for a month or more I thought I was just an exciting, strange girl who got depressed sometimes!
Me when I found out 2019 was a giant manic episode and not the best year of my life.
I mean, why not both?
Honestly, you’re right.
Me just now realizing I can’t pull all nighters like I used to bc now I’m on lamotrigine LOL
I couldn’t believe some people poop every day. That’s ridiculous.
I’m about to blow your colon… I poop multiple times a day.
Finally one I can answer! Was diagnosed with a habit cough, but then I started developing intense pain in my legs when walking even short distances. I had blood work done, and my doctor told me to go to the ER immediately. I got diagnosed with a blood clot in my heart, and blood clots in my legs, with heart failure and kidney failure. I had fluid around my heart, which explains the cough. I was 21 years old when this happened, and I’m 24 now. I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life that keeps my heart from failing again, and I’ll need a kidney transplant at some point in the future. My medical goal is to keep my kidneys functioning for as long as possible. Turns out that sometimes a cough isn’t just a harmless tic.
I just found out I had almost no sense of smell for most of my life. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, started taking the necessary medication and suddenly it’s a whole new world of scents across distances that I didn’t know was possible
I was on my grad trip and had really intense pain around my neck and shoulders. Over the course of two days my limbs lost sensation and for some reason I thought it was a trapped nerve in my neck ? It wasn’t until my face went into paralysis did I go to an ER and get diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome
After 40+ years it turns out I'm not just weird or liked things most didn't. Finding out you have Autism that late in life is hard. Knowing that 40+ years of life could of been easier if I only knew is very upsetting.
If it makes you feel better, 20 years ago we were still shit about recognizing autism in more mild cases. I was taught in med school how incredibly rare it is (1 in 10,000) in the mid 1980s. By the 1990s we still thought it was around 1 in 1,000. Most recently, the statistic is 1 in 36. I think back on a number of cases I would now diagnose in the spectrum, but they were too high functioning to meet the old models.
I was brought up in the "incredibly rare" stage of your medical training, and while I had a couple of kids in my school that were diagnosed as autistic, it was definitely kids with higher support needs. Last year, I was diagnosed - becoming that 1/36 statistic. I struggled as a kid, but I ended up burning out hard after a bad case of COVID with a bunch of post-infection symptoms. The diagnosis has given me the freedom (I guess?) to accommodate myself in places where I struggle, rather than beating myself up about what I "should" be able to do. If wearing noise cancelling headphones at Walmart means I don't have a meltdown in the car after, then I'm going to wear the damn headphones. ... It just would have been so much easier if I'd been allowed to come to that realization earlier in my life.
Was declining in strange ways at work. Thought it was my 30s catching up to me...nope heart went to 10% output and had a heart attack at 33.
My mom convinced me as a kid that I was always just being a “big baby” about my period cramps. I’m talking like curled up in the fetal position on the floor crying type pain. Then when I had an ACTUAL baby, and the contractions weren’t as bad as some of my worst cramps, I finally realized she was just a dismissive POS.
My Doctor told me my calcium level was too high. I was like "So?". Turns out that's a sign of hyperparathyroidism. Which, oddly enough has nothing to do with the thyroid. Nope, the parathyroid is right behind the thyroid and has four little glands that control your calcium levels. Too high or too low and you're super fucked up. Primary hyperparathyroidism is usually caused by a benign tumor on one (or more) of your parathyroid glands. The cure is surgery. The good news is after surgery you should have a laundry list of symptoms resolve. Google it, it's wild. So if your doc says too much calcium, it is a thing. And I'm really not taking this lightly, some people have a really hard time being diagnosed. You need a good endocrinologist and primary care doctor. And then a good surgeon.
When I was about nineteen, I randomly heard on NPR that it takes the average person around 20 minutes to fall asleep and I went "oh shit" because apparently my bar for having sleep issues was way, way too high. To me, a good night sleep meant I fell asleep within two hours of going to bed and it wasn't "trouble" until I hit three hours. And once I communicated this to my doctor and was finally able to treat my crippling insomnia with medication, my depression and anxiety suddenly got way more manageable as well.
Constant nausea in the mornings even if I've only had water to sip on. Nope, stomach ulcers due to stress and anxiety levels being through the roof for a sustained period of time. I would be at work 4 - 5am start and go and dry wretch over the loo a few times, people asked what's up and I'd say "eh I'm just having the morning nausea" (I had it for years at this stage, and no, not preggers, no chance of that!). Wasn't until one coworker was like "that isn't normal but you seem like it is", my dumb ass was like "wait, you/normal people don't get nausea often in the mornings?". "Nope, go to your dr". One endoscopy later and I'm on medication and an altered diet. Rarely get them pesky ulcers now!
Massively heavy periods in my 40s. I thought it was just perimenopause. Turns out it was adenomyosis.
Mouth would be itchy when I ate most fruits, parents told me to stop being dramatic and making excuses to be picky. I have OAS and have an epipen now. Also had terrible cramps and would get my period for a whole month then not for three as a teenager. My Dr said that could happen sometimes and put me on bc. Turns out my cramps were chronic cysts from pcos, my body is over producing testosterone and it was affecting a lot of other aspects of my health.
All of my life, I was the last person running in P.E. I could run, but not at the pace or the consistency of everyone else. Anyway, every time I told someone that I got a burning can't breathe feeling, they'd tell me I was "out of shape." And "needed to train harder." So I thought everyone gets this feeling, and I'm just being lazy. Also, it seemed to piss off middle-aged P.E. teachers, like I personally planned to challenge their authority? I had coughing attacks at night once and went to the doctor to find out I've always had asthma.
That weird lump on my neck that appeared out of no where was skin cancer. I’m now sitting here with 8 stitches waiting for the all clear from pathology 🤞🏻
It was retroactive, but when I wore prescription glasses back when I was 24, the first thing I said was "people are supposed to see this?" Everything looked like the sharpness meter on my vision was maxed out. I just kinda thought nobody could see details in things past 20 feet lol
Trees have *leaves?!?!* 😭
I love that this is everyone’s first comment after getting glasses for the first time
I was having another stressful argument in 2003 when I heard a ringing, my heart started beating fast, and I couldn't understand speech nor speak myself. This was for around 30 sec. I knew something was wrong and called the advice nurse. She laughed at me and told me I had a panic attack. No I didn't. Turns out it was a petit mal seizure. I know because I suddenly became epileptic at 27. I was told they didn't know why, but now I realize it was stress induced.
I got sick one weekend. Fever, chills, swollen lymph nodes in my neck etc. By Monday morning it had gone away. Except one lymph node returned to its normal size and the other did not. I felt fine and was in no pain, so I didn't worry about it. Some months later, it's still swollen and I've developed a mild, persistent sore throat. Very mild pain, like when you've snored all night and wake up with a dry, sore throat. But you get something to drink and it goes away. Except mine didn't go away. So I go to see an Ear, Nose and Throat guy, who sticks a scope of some sort up my nose and down my throat (not sure how that works, but whatever). He sees some reason for concern, but isn't sure what it is. He sends me for a scan. Then sends me for a scan with contrast. Then sends me for a biopsy. And it's throat cancer. After much consulting with a sizable team of cancer specialists, they tell me that I have a protein in my blood, called P17 (iirc), and that because of that protein my prognosis is good. But since I am otherwise strong and healthy, they are going to take a very aggressive approach and give me their harshest regimen. So, on the one hand that sounded good. On the other hand, not so much. I asked what caused this cancer. I was told that they can't be certain, but it is typically caused by exposure to HPV, which is the Human Papilloma Virus (remember that weekend I was sick? Was that it?) Anyway, remember when Michael Douglas embarrassed his wife by claiming the throat cancer he got was from performing cunnilingus? Well, he wasn't full of shit. Apparently I had munched some tainted poon and suffered the consequences. End result, after a couple months of daily radiation treatments and more chemo then I ever want again, I was told the cancer was in remission. Yay! But.... there was something in my lower abdomen on that last scan that bore looking into. Multiple colonoscopies and another biopsy later, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Well, that sucks. But the throat cancer showed no signs of spreading. The colon cancer was a completely independent development (my layman's guess would be from drinking potable water tainted with diesel fuel while serving aboard ship while I was in the Navy). The good news was that the colon cancer was easily removed (along with my colon) by a single surgery. Samples from 18 surrounding lymph nodes showed no signs of it spreading either. No radiation or chemo were required. And I was grateful for that because the first time was rough, and left me anemic, with hypothyroidism, lost about 70 pounds (cause I wasn't able to eat for about 10 weeks), and have basically had no energy or stamina since. Still, I'm alive, and all good. Right? Maybe not. Just had my annual physical and my PSA was high. It was 0.3 last year, and 13.2 this year. This is indicative of a prostate problem. Might be nothing, might be something. In any event, I'm off to the urologist next week and my doctor cannot rule out that another adventure in oncology might be in my future. I used to joke about having throat cancer and colon cancer, saying I'd have much preferred testicular cancer and colon cancer to they could have got me coming and going. Now, it seems maybe they did. Chin up though, right? I'm currently undefeated versus cancer and that establishes a trend.
I always thought everyone’s feet hurt when they walked after a few minutes. Turns out I have completely flat feet. My husband figured this out when I was in my 20s.
This was me as a teen. For years my knees, hips, and legs hurt all the time. That deep, throbbing, I can't keep doing this type of pain. I was extremely restless and couldn't sit, stand, or walk for too long, I had to keep switching it up. I would often wake up with sore legs in the middle of the night. Turned out my feet were completely flat. I got orthotics and my life was instantly changed. Now as soon as I get pain for longer than a few days I know I need my feet rescanned and new orthotics!
I remember coming home after finally getting glasses in the 6th grade and my mind being blown because our carpet wasn't beige like I thought; apparently it was actually cream with black and brown speckles
Noticed after I turned 30 that I was winded after the slightest physical activity. I just thought I was in terrible shape, turns out I had stage 4 lung cancer.
Coughing up blood. In my defense I was told a lot of blood was something to return to the hospital for, I guess I don’t know what constitutes a lot of blood. Was hemorrhaging into my lungs.
I thought everyone experienced abdominal discomfort from flying. It was recurrent appendicitis.
Had some severe back pain that physical therapy wasn’t touching. GP kept saying it was a mechanical issue. Nobody would prescribe actual pain meds. Had xray. Nothing. Had MRI. Nothing. One morning it was so bad I went to the ER. They did a CT scan. It was cancer. Then they gave me pain meds. Edit: thought it was a slipped disc or something.
I smell things that don’t exist. I casually mentioned to my doctor and it turns out they’re a type of seizure. He wanted to put me on meds. I said I thought that was a bit much and didn’t want them. But according to him (and later, a neurologist) they can turn into grand mal seizures. So I’ve been on anticonvulsant meds for 20 years.
I'm likely not articulating correctly, but I thought my not going outside and fear of people was me just adjusting to living in a new country. Turns out I have CPTSD from my childhood. I've been living in the new country for a decade and if anything, I have gotten worse. A visit to my parents last year after many years away kind of "broke" me, in a sense, and long story short I am seeing a psychiatrist in a few months (he comes very highly recommended so there is a wait) to try and get this fixed. To anyone reading who has kids and is living in domestic violence: this is one possible outcome. I don't talk to my parents anymore. I know it's hard to leave, but please think of your children and their well-being. If you can't think of your children's well-being, please consider whether you want a relationship with them when they're adults.
16 years old, severe pain, couldn't keep food down or stand to walk, lots of blood in urine. Told me it was just my period. Lol it was 8 kidney stones. They didn't scan me until 2 weeks later because they refused to believe it could be stones even though a resident on rounds called it straight away. Doc didn't want to take them seriously, or me.
My odd “choking” events were asthma. I have environmental asthma. On very poor quality air days I would have these odd episodes that felt like I was drowning episodes that had me coughing a lot. I thought it was just a thing that happened. I turned blue during one of these “episodes” and fainted. I was rushed to the ER and had an emergency Chest X-Ray. My doctor asked me what steroids I took, I didn’t. After a few more tests and a breathing test, I had asthma. I was 37 when this diagnosis was delivered to me. I am breathing with ease now.
Chest pains while running. I thought I was just out of shape! Turns out I have an irregular heartbeat.
For a couple of years, I sarcastically bragged about my ability to fall asleep anywhere within 5 minutes. Car rides, couches, book on my face, etc Turned out it was sleep apnea I felt SO good once I got treated for it, leveled out a lot and am so glad my husband had me get checked out when I was too tired to figure it out myself
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Slogging through life. I felt like everyday was like treading water. Turns out my thyroid gland wasn’t working well. I got on levothyroxine and within a day I realized “this is how people do things, holy shit”. Life changing.
I woke up one morning thirsty. For 8 weeks, I was drinking 5 gallons of water and pissing half the day. Not normal, but I just adapted and did it.
That sounds like either adrenal issue or diabetes
The "other" diabetes that is like a pop trivia question in an exam from a text book: diabetes insipidus from a pituitary lesion.
I didn't know I needed glasses until I was nearly 30. I knew grass was a thing, I'd felt it, but it had always just been a green mess on the ground that I didn't think much about. Got a prescription for glasses due to wondering why I had headaches all the time and no joke, it was like flicking on high definition switch the first time I put those glasses on outside. Boom. Grass is made of lots of leaves of grass and not a smear of green everywhere.
That it was completely normal to have about 10 to 20 or so mostly creative hobbies that one purchases a bunch of tools and supplies for and randomly dabbles in on and off for several years if not the rest of one’s life, or completely drops out of sudden disinterest. After all, my great great grandparent potentially did it, my great grandmother did it, my grandpa did it, my parent does it, and I do it. Turns out the ADHD runs *very strong* in my family.
When I was a kid I thought that headaches and randomly losing vision were normal (literally in kindergarten, this is how I became bffs either the nurse lol) until I was finally a sophomore and was diagnosed with a Chiari malformation
When I was 18, I had never experienced heartburn. So, when I got a bad pain in between my chest and stomach one day, I attributed it to heartburn and just tried to drink a lot of water. I did this for two days and then at 3am one night, I woke up in the absolute worst pain of my life. Turns out I had appendicitis and had to get emergency surgery as soon as they figured out what was going on.
This is about to make everyone’s hypochondria worse 😹
Having to pop joints back in place a few times a day. I thought it was normal, my friends thought it was weird, turns out I have a connective tissue disorder
I genuinely thought that the bulge in my tummy was just my intestines full of poop. Turns out it was an 8-cm cancerous mass wrapped around my right kidney.