We cannot deny that many people tend to disregard and neglect their own bodies without thinking about the consequences. When the suffering becomes too much, they decide to visit a doctor.
What’s worse is when the illness becomes too much to cure or undergo a simple procedure. These people from the Reddit community shared their stories of patients visiting the hospital way too late.
1. Can’t Walk
Imaging guy here. I have a million of these and work with vascular patients and wounds. Had a guy whose foot was completely broken sideways at the ankle.
He had it still wrapped from when he left the hospital. He would use the stumpy part to move around on his wheelchair and leave little blood sponge prints on the floor.
Another guy with bad ankle and foot wounds decided to stop going to wound care and was afraid to take the wraps off even after his foot started to stink. By the time I saw him, his skin had kinda of liquified.
Earlier on in my career, I saw a guy with necrotizing wounds to both legs that had eaten muscle in multiple places below the knee. I asked him how long they looked like that, and he said it had been about two years.
The next time I saw him, he was bilateral above knee amp. Stump wounds. Just... Stump wounds. Take care of your feet, people. If you're diabetic and can't feel the bumps and scrapes, please check your feet regularly.
Pokejuffowup
2. Ineffective Remedy
Former medic here. I got called for a patient who had cut their leg while chopping wood about a week prior, and now it was really itchy.
The old gentleman didn’t drive and lived alone. Got to his house and unwrapped the ungodly swollen leg to find that he’d tried to superglue the wound closed.
Then, the maggots had commenced to grow inside. The itching he was feeling was caused by the writhing maggots under his skin.
LillyPasta
3. No More Options
The guy came in with a dead leg. Well, he waited until it turned black and then decided to head to the ER. They tried an angiogram to open up blood flow.
However, it was way too late for that. The guy had several clots in his lungs and legs. Undiagnosed atrial fibrillation. We ran out of solutions.
He couldn't believe we were going to amputate and kept asking me what else I could do. Go back in time a week ago and come in kinda around when it turned blue.
Almostjelly
4. Taped Fingers
A cook came in with a black finger taped (with clear tape, not medical tape) to what was left of his finger stump (which was infected).
He thought we could reattach the thing weeks after he accidentally chopped his finger.
He said he didn't come in sooner because he was at sea and decided to wait for the cruise ship to dock home before attending to it.
I just stared in horror as the orthopedic intern and couldn't believe what I was hearing. As expected, the consultant explained the futility of reattachment, and he was scheduled for a debridement instead.
PM_me_punanis
5. Too Severe
I had a 65-year-old dude who was diagnosed with lymphoma eight months before we saw him. He lived an hour out of the city and didn't want to drive in for treatment, so he decided he wouldn't get treated at all and stayed in his little remote place in the country by himself.
Essentially, because it didn't get treated, it spread along his skin, and his neighbors called an ambulance when popping in on him.
It had spread so far that it essentially went from his head to his knees. It had started to invade his eyes and mouth membranes. He couldn't drink and could barely see.
His skin had started to slough off, and he was so severely dehydrated because he was losing so much excess fluid from his open skin that we had to treat him like a severe burns patient and had plastic involvement.
The consultant said if he had received treatment, there was a chance he could have recovered. Instead, he died three weeks later.
kaloking
6. No Face
Years ago, as a nursing assistant on an oncology floor, we had a guy admitted because he lost the ability to pee. His bladder was close to bursting, and his poor junk was... think microwaved hotdog. Really bad.
But NONE of that was as interesting as the fact that this guy had untreated skin cancer on his nose for several years that had, over time, become infected, developed MRSA, and spread across his face.
He had no nose, no cheek, and no eye on one side of his face, and he was starting to lose his other eye. You could see part of his skull.
I don't know why he chose to leave it untreated, and I have no idea how long it took to get that bad, but I will never ever forget the smell and texture of his rotting face.
On the upside, we were eventually able to convince him to have reconstructive surgery. He ended up getting a skin graft that covered up his eye, nose and cheek.
So, if you ever meet a very grumpy dude with nothing but a mouth and one eye, know that this is way better than the alternative.
mzladyperson
7. Good Guy
A guy I knew growing up got an infection in the skin on his nose, which eventually ate away the nose part. When he removed the gauze he kept on it, you could see his nasal bones like a skull.
He was working poor with a family to provide for and did not feel he could afford the medical bill. Eventually, someone from his church convinced him to let them pay for treatment to clear up the infection.
For years, he went around with a sort of patch over it and a piece of metal that made it look like his nose was underneath there.
Eventually, he died in a car accident, and his wife got the mortician to sculpt him a nose based on old photos so they could do a showing in the casket. His youngest child didn't recognize him and was very upset.
The guy's nose had been gone since before the kid was born. As a kid, I was kind of fascinated by the gore of it. As an adult, I cringe imagining how much pain and suffering the guy went through.
RelativelyRidiculous
8. Better To Wait
This has happened a few times, actually. But I had a gal come in on Monday after being discharged from the hospital Friday after giving birth.
So basically, we tell ladies to avoid making out until a doctor clears them, and well, her spouse kept insisting and insisting that Friday night, she caved and let him go to town.
He wound up tearing some stitches that were placed and bleeding like a stuck hog all weekend long. She came into our clinic blue in the lips and fingers, and her hemoglobin was 4 (normal should be 12 - 15).
She didn't wanna be a bother, so she waited until she started feeling dizzy all the time. She got another trip to the hospital for transfusion and repair for that.
Ssutuanjoe
9. Cannot Convince
Once, an older lady called in wanting a prescription for pain meds because she was sure she had shingles. Said her neighbor had them, and she was sure that’s what it was.
She hadn’t been in for an exam in almost two years, so the doctor asked that she come in to be evaluated before a prescription could be given.
She refused and called again the next day, asking for a prescription. This went on all week. She called for pain meds, and the doctor asked her to come in to be seen. She finally agreed to make an appointment. It wasn’t shingles. It was a skin ulceration from advanced cancer.
[deleted]
10. Strong Kick
I'm not a doctor/hospital staff, but my grandpa ended up passing away because he waited too long before going to the hospital. This was about 17 years ago.
He was tending to one of his mules when something spooked it, and he got kicked in the gut. He was in a lot of pain and could barely move due to the abdominal pain, so he decided to take it easy and lounge on the couch for a week.
He refused to go to be taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, that mule kick ruptured an unknown tumor in his intestines. The doctor said it was huge, like volleyball size huge, and he may have survived if he had come in sooner.
By the time we got him to the hospital, he had a severe case of gangrene. His leg needed to be amputated within a day of him being there, and he passed away a week later.
cpatrick87
11. Hiding Pain
My granddad died of cancer at the age of 90. Tumor under his diaphragm. It turned out he’d had it for about ten years. He knew he’d had it but didn’t tell anyone until he couldn’t hide it anymore.
He was coughing and having a hard time breathing. They said it was the size of a softball when it took him. It was understandable to have it hidden for ten years.
In those ten years, he tore down three hodgepodge additions to his house, built a new one that added about 1000 square feet, remodeled his garage, replaced the patio with a deck and a gazebo, rebuilt the front porch on his house, and tended two large gardens every year.
madeofpockets
12. The Stubborn One
I am a doctor, and while working in A&E, we had an older chap, possibly in his 70s, who, several days prior to the presentation, had a sudden onset of severe chest pain and vomiting while loading the car with shopping.
He ignored it and struggled home. The next day, he started to lose the use of both legs and, by the time he came to the hospital, had been CRAWLING around his house for SEVERAL DAYS because he thought it would get better.
He had had a major cardiac event and developed a clot that his heart had pumped out. It went down his body, broke in half, and blocked off the blood supply to both legs. He literally had dead legs.
I don't know what ended up happening to him, but there was no way to save the legs, and I reckon the outcome was very poor, if not fatal.
ozzborne
13. Bad Teeth
The children’s nurse is here. During my first week in the pediatric ED, we had a young girl (6/7) come in with a really swollen jaw/face.
The poor girl was unable to move her jaw without intense pain and hadn’t been able to eat for several days.
Turns out she had only just started cleaning her teeth for the first time ever and managed to develop several abscesses and rotten teeth in the process.
To make it worse, her mum told us she was recovering from the same procedures to remove most of her teeth because of almost the same thing... they didn’t want to bother the GP as they thought she was just messing about to get out of school.
MontanaT13
14. Living Immortal
I got really sick really fast, but didn't realize it. I had stage 4 Burkitt's leukemia cns positive, which is very important to know. Less than 100 people my age will get that cancer each year in the USA, so it's pretty uncommon.
Anyway, I got super sick just over a year ago and just happened to have a doctor's appointment scheduled. Went to the appointment and felt like absolute trash, sweaty, hot, lethargic, lightheaded, terrible heartburn, and just tired.
Also, I could barely breathe. My dad, who was driving me to the appointment, had to wake me up, and I remember him saying, "Get up, we have a doctor's appointment to get to, you better be freaking sick!"
In his defense, he had no idea, and neither did I, just how sick I was, as two weeks before, I was fine, working in South Carolina on a construction job.
So we get to the appointment, and I get bloodwork and an ultrasound of my chest cavity. The doctor saw the ultrasound photos and was stunned. Then, I saw my bloodwork and told me to get back to the hospital, as we left to go home and would hear the results later.
The doctor saw seven tumors on my liver, the biggest the size of a grapefruit and the second largest the size of a baseball, and then saw my bloodwork was trashed.
Diagnosed me with cancer and said it was a miracle I was awake, let alone walking and cracking jokes. I only found out later that Burkitt's cells can double in size within 24-48 hours.
Doc wondered why I hadn't had problems with my monster tumors before since I only scheduled the appointment to fix heartburn.
Stryker2279
15. Playing Dumb
I was sitting in a hostel with an emergency nurse and an emergency doctor who had just found out that while they worked on different continents, they did similar work.
We were happily chatting along, and this older guy walked in. He overhears that they're in the medical field and comes up to see if he can ask a question. He shows them his leg, which has large black spots everywhere below the knee.
Both the nurse and the doctor look at it and immediately say, "You have to go see emergency services. That leg is necrotic. You'll lose the leg if not your life."
The guy goes, "Ha, that's what my doctor back home said too. But the leg feels fine. I'd know if it was dying. You are wrong. Besides, I'm not going to ruin my vacation by seeking medical treatment.” This left me wondering why he asked in the first place.
He goes to sit at the bar, and over the course of the evening, both the nurse and the doctor leave the table to try to get this guy to understand that he may not have ten days until he's back home.
That he needs to have this looked at NOW without success, I'm pretty sure that if that guy made it to a hospital, they asked themselves that question.
BerriesAndMe
16. Pressing Worms
When I was in massage school, we did low-cost massages to get our practice hours in (think like $15-25 an hour), so we saw various parts of the community.
Once, I saw a client who had a smell during the intake, and once I pulled back the sheets to do their feet, I was slapped in the face with it. Pushed forward and did an initial stretch and press on the feet.
And out poked some worms/maggots from between their toes and on the pads of their feet. It was horrifying, and when I recommended (urged) them to go to the ER about it, they got offended like I was making fun of them and left. Yes, they were diabetic.
Healing_touch
17. Appointment Struggles
I work in Orthopedics. A very common occurrence is a patient being told to follow up within the week (we like to see fractures between 5 and 7 days), and the patient will call on the 6th day and say, "I broke something and need to be seen tomorrow."
This is frustrating because we very rarely have the ability to get a patient in the next day, and if they had called the day of or the day after, then we definitely could have gotten them seen.
But my number one "why didn't you come in sooner?!" moment was getting a call from a patient who had broken their forearm two months ago and never followed up.
I scheduled them, but they did not attend their appointment. Rescheduled, but they no show. Second, reschedule. They arrive with a very obvious deformity to their arm due to the fracture healing incorrectly.
It wouldn't have been an issue if they had just come in. It just blows my mind that they went almost three months without care.
Aviouse96
18. Know Your Body
I played basketball in high school. One day at practice, I was going in for a layup and got knocked by a teammate. I went in and ended up hitting the wall under the baseline pretty hard, with my hand in a really awkward position as it hit. It hurt.
I finished practice, barely being able to pressure the ball. I went home and had my doctor's dad take a look because I felt like it was more than a typical hand sprain.
He ran me through the paces quickly and said that it couldn't be broken because I wouldn't be able to handle the test without screaming if it was.
Ok, no problem, just a nasty sprain. I practiced and played in pain for the next two weeks. After one game, I told my mom on the way home that my hand hurt really badly and I needed to get to a doctor.
Well, one x-ray later, it turns out that I hit at the angle that caused a break in my hand from it. And I played with a broken hand for two weeks because of it. So, cast on the hand. The season is gone because of a broken hand. All good, right? Nope.
Turns out that the result of playing with it also pinched and killed a vein in the neighboring finger. So when I complained that my hand was still hurting six months later, we went to the surgeon, and I had an avascular necrosis of the knuckle joint.
So I had to have the bone scraped out and new bone grafted in to keep the finger. Also, no more football at all because the weakened joint could be easily crushed, and that would require amputation.
TheTyger
19. Not The DIY
I was working as a surgical junior when my team was called down to A&E to see a patient who had come in with a complication from a recent hernia operation.
When we came down, we saw that the patient was holding a plastic bag over their abdomen.
When this was removed, we found that their wound had opened, and their intestine was visible to the air.
It transpired that this was not something that had happened overnight. It had taken several days. The patient had started using plastic bags and newspaper to dress the wound when they ran out of dressings.
chewingthefatchungus
20. Poked Lungs
A&E/ED doctor here! A farmer in his 70s reluctantly came in with his wife after falling over outside while wrangling a sheep one WEEK earlier.
He did not want to be there but had been “forced” to come by his wife, who was worried about him.
On questioning/examination, he was pale, short of breath, and clearly in pain all over the right side of his chest.
However, he did not want to show it! X-ray and blood showed he’d broken loads of ribs, punctured his lung, bled profusely into his chest, and was now very anemic!
LPScot
21. Sweeping Off Condition
I had a patient come in saying he couldn’t see. How long had it been going on? For five days. The man had been blind for five days and didn’t come in because he thought it might be “like a cold Or something.”
During the exam, when I asked him to move his legs, he said, “Oh, I can’t do that.”. I asked how long he’d been unable to move his legs or walk.
His wife chimes in about two years. Never saw a doctor about it- They just borrowed a friend's wheelchair and kept it rolling. Turned out he’d had multiple strokes with multiple risk factors he never addressed.
Given how little insight he appeared to have into the condition, I honestly felt sorry- he didn’t have insurance, so I’m sure that played a role In Him avoiding seeing anyone.
DOctermom
22. No Funds
About a year and a half ago, I broke my foot. When it happened, I assumed it was just badly sprained (I don't know if you can sprain a foot, but I've had knee sprains before, and after the first one, I handled it myself).
I spent three days hopping around with an ace bandage. I elevated my foot, alternated ice and warmth, and expected it to get better.
When, on the 3rd day, my son accidentally brushed against it, and I screamed out a whole lot of words that he should never repeat, I realized it was a serious problem and something I couldn't handle on my own.
Went to the ER and had to wait for several hours because, ya know. The doctor looked at my foot and told me it was broken. I was like, uh, don't you need an x-ray?
She told me that it was obvious that something was broken, gave me a big fat shot of some hella powerful meds, and sent me to an x-ray. My foot was severely broken. They put me in a boot for three months to see if it would fix itself, and then I had surgery.
Two screws later (and another six months in the stupid goddamned boot), I can walk. The cost of the surgery and the lagniappe was more than $28,000.
Thankfully, the hospital filled me for Medicaid because I literally laughed in the woman's face when she told me the price. I think I offered to trade a kidney for the bill.
Unfortunately, the insurance I was able to get didn't cover physical therapy (the same issue I had with a broken finger several years before). So sometimes I limp, and I've got a wonky finger. But I don't have a fortune in debt, so I guess that's a win.
insouciantelle
23. Strange Skin
Not me but my brother is an EMT for a warehouse. He recently had a guy come to his station saying something was wrong with his toe. So he asks him to take off his shoe, which he does.
My brother was about to ask him to take off the bandage around his big toe before he realized that wasn't a bandage. It was his skin. Apparently, this guy dropped a 20-pound tote on his toe a week earlier and had been showing up at work anyway.
They sent him to the doctor; the doctor sent him to the ER. The diagnosis came back as a tissue infection, as well as osteomyelitis (a bone infection).
But wait, there's more! The guy comes back from the ER and tells him that he doesn't want to go through the ER doctor and would rather go through his own insurance.
My brother explained to him as best as he could that, as it stood, he was already likely going to lose his toe, and if he waited any longer to get it treated, he ran the risk of losing his entire leg. I'm not sure what happened after that. I just hope he got the point.
Axikten
24. Avoiding Hospitals
Not a doctor, just a student shadowing. During the pandemic, a guy with a history of heart issues had a heart attack with classical chest pain.
Then, he had symptoms of heart failure, which he recognized because it had happened to him before. But he still waited a few days because he was worried about coming to the hospital during the pandemic.
Finally, it got so bad (he couldn’t breathe from the fluid backed up into his lungs) that he came to the ER when he was obviously hospitalized.
My professor also said he recently had a patient with an aortic aneurysm who was misdiagnosed because she only had a telehealth visit (no imaging) due to the pandemic. She ended up with an aortic dissection.
[deleted]
25. Too Small With Big Results
Ok, I'm not a doctor...I'm the idiot who didn't come in sooner. When I was a teenager, I thought this certain shoe was the hit. Even though the pair I bought were pretty cramped in the toe, I used them all the time for PE.
Here is where things started to go wrong. I started getting an ingrown toenail, and instead of taking care of it, I just tried to cut the nail out and ended up with this puffy, red, angry, shooting pain in my toe.
Then I noticed some wetness in my shoe—it was puss. What do I do? I buy a new pack of socks for the next two weeks. In week two, I woke up, and my foot was on fire. I looked, and it was half red, half purple, and puffy to the touch.
I go to urgent care with my mom, who doesn't show her the foot; I just think I need it looked at. The doctor comes in. "Yeah, I'll take a look, but we don't do ingrown toenail extractions. I'm sure it's not that bad."
I take off my shoes. The smell. My mom turned white and had to sit down as she fell into a literal litany of nonstop prayer. The doctor says, "That is the most infected thing I've seen in the last ten years. I'll grab the kit. We need to get this toenail out and put you on serious antibiotics NOW."
footinmymouth
26. Almost Impossible
Not a nurse/doctor but a lab scientist. Had a guy come in at the end of the day for chest pain that’s been bothering him “all weekend.”
The ED doc ordered a troponin blood test, which helps rule in/out heart attacks.
If the test runs above 0.03, we consider that a sign of a heart attack and act accordingly.
This guy’s very first troponin was 21.00. TWENTY-ONE. The highest we’ve ever had up till then was an 8.00. The guy should’ve been dead ages ago but he somehow pulled through. Don’t ignore chest pains, people.
LimeGap
27. Took Literally
We can start with a gentleman in his 70s who was diagnosed with diabetes. His doctor instructed him that it was important for him to wear socks and supportive shoes throughout the day.
So this guy decides that meant “wear the same pair of socks for weeks and never take them off.” He had showered, slept, and carried on in the same pair of socks for weeks.
He came to the ER because there was blood oozing through his sock and there was pain under there. Take the sock off. He’s got a diabetic ulcer that had opened and was full of maggots. Not a pretty sight. We clarified those instructions pretty quickly.
mdm_pomfrey
28. No More Waiting
My Dad is the one that wouldn't go in. He got a sore in the crease on the bottom of his second toe (the one next to the big toe, so it would be the Piggy That Stayed Home) and just kept ignoring it.
He would go with his wife to her nail place and have his toenails trimmed, and I think that's where the infection probably got in when they soaked his feet.
He blew it off for a couple of weeks until his wife made him see the doctor. It's a good thing she did. The infection had gotten into the bone, so they had to snip his toe off to the first knuckle to catch it before it went any further.
The doctor said had he waited any longer, he could have lost the entire foot. He's lucky to just have a Stubby Piggy and not a Stubby Leg.
Peters_Wife
29. Self Revival
Nurse here. I work in a very rural hospital, and we have a patient population that seems to avoid the hospital at all costs. I have had so many, usually related to diabetics with foot sores- almost always resulting in amputation of a toe (or more).
However, my favorite was an elderly farmer who came in with chest pain that 'Wouldn't go away,' as he put it. When we asked him if he had it before- he said that he had been having chest pain on and off for years, but it would typically go away after he grabbed his electric fence.
Apparently, the first time he had the pain, he was standing out near an electric fence on his farm. He reached out to steady himself and accidentally grabbed the fence, which shocked him and made the pain go away.
So after that, whenever he would have pain, he just went and grabbed the fence, and it made him feel better. He had literally been cardioverting himself for years. He was fixed up and sent on his way- but we all still chuckle about it now and then because he was so nonchalant about it.
FlaviusArrianus
30. Too Much Coffee
I am not a doctor, but I was this patient once. In my sophomore year of college, I started drinking coffee. And, as college students can be wont to do, I drank a lot of it.
One evening, during midterm week, I get a bad headache, so I drink some coffee and settle in to churn out a few hours of work. My headache goes away, but I start noticing tingling and numbness in the right side of my body.
It eventually gets bad enough that I can feel the line down my face where the tingling ends. My whole right side is totally numb.
But it's midterm week, and I think I should just sleep it off, and it'll be fine. Right? So I go to bed, wake up at 8 a.m., and the numbness gets worse.
Eventually (at about 10 a.m.), I finally asked a friend to drive me to the ER. The ER doctor was horrified that I had ignored a very obvious sign of a stroke for at least 12 hours.
It ended up being a complex migraine brought on by, essentially, a caffeine overdose and sleep deprivation. I adjusted parts of my lifestyle (including monitoring my coffee intake) and haven't had a repeat episode.
adrialise
31. Finger Of A Finger
Had a guy show up in my clinic one day with a complaint of finger swelling. So, as the story goes, his finger gets swollen and painful about a week prior.
Just got worse and worse, and about three days prior to coming, a hole opened up in the tip of his finger (this is where I, personally, would have noped right to the office).
So, come the day of the visit, he says, “By the way, I pulled something out of the hole in my finger yesterday with a pair of tweezers. No idea what it is.” I asked him if he had taken a picture or kept it, and he had produced a tissue from his shirt pocket.
It was his distal phalanx (read: last bone in the finger). The bone had gotten infected, and the body did its thing and basically tried to eject what was now a hot foreign body. The guy pulled his fingertip out of his fingertip. A better magic trick I have not since seen.
AN-I-MAL
32. Falling Feet
Nurse here: Had a diabetic who couldn’t afford to fill his oil tank during the winter. He was young, too, in his early 40s. Anywho. Had neuropathy in his feet, so couldn’t feel that they were becoming frostbitten.
He had also been wearing his winter boots 24/7 for warmth. His sister went to check on him one day after she realized his phone was shut off. She brought him in because she thought he seemed off.
The doctor asked me to take his boots off, and one of his toes came off with the boot (no joke). He ended up having a below-the-knee amputation to one leg and a transmetatarsal amputation to the other and was on IV antibiotics for weeks.
realish7
33. Wrist Hole
I’m a PA in ortho, working in hand surgery at the time. The patient says he had a wrist replacement a number of years ago and has a hole in his wrist. I figure he has a small, draining sinus.
He comes in. First, I see his X-rays, which look like he has a massive contracture. Not ideal, but not uncommon. He has a band on his wrist, which I peel off to see a 3X6cm hole in his wrist opening directly on his implanted wrist replacement.
It was specifically on the poly insert that allowed the two portions of the implants to glide on one another. He said he had noticed the hole about 4 YEARS AGO, and when it got so large, he finally decided to see someone!!!
SHIZZLEO
34. Not Just A Toothache
"My tooth has been hurting for a couple of months. My face started swelling a few days ago. It became hard to swallow last night, and now I'm having trouble breathing."
Guy had Ludwig's Angina. He couldn't be intubated because of the swelling and had to get an emergency trach when he stopped breathing, and his O2 stats plummeted.
IV antibiotics for two weeks. Admitted to the hospital for four weeks. Easily could have died. All because of a dental infection. SEE YOUR DENTIST, BOYS AND GIRLS!
Kliarin
35. Infected Tattoo
Not a doctor, but an Army medic. Had a dude come into the aid station at, like, 2 am with his arm all wrapped up. Took the wraps off. It literally looked necrotic.
I asked him what the heck was going on. It turns out that the weekend before we went out to the field, this man went and got his whole forearm tattooed.
He then spent the next week wading through chest-deep swamps, figuring that if he just kept his arm wrapped, he’d be okay. I was like...brother, no.
TezPez3000
36. Worst Advice
Not a doctor or nurse but the patient. I went to my doctor with some back pain and also brought up that my leg was swollen. The doctor I saw said it was probably just swelling due to sodium intake.
A week later, the pressure and pain in my leg was so bad that it hurt to walk. I called off of work and had my husband take me back to the doctor. The doctor took one look and told me to get to the hospital immediately, and he suspected I had a blood clot.
I ended up having a massive blood clot from my hip to my knee and pulmonary emboli. I was transferred to another hospital for surgery and stayed in the ICU. Had I waited any longer, I would have died.
Domidoggy8
37. No More Mister Tough Guy
NAD, but the patient. A few years ago. I had a boil on my back that I thought, as Mr. Tough Guy, I could "walk it off." Um, no, you can't.
I was in so much pain that I couldn't sit or stand near the end; I could only limp along or lay down in an extremely convoluted position.
I went over two weeks before it got so bad I couldn't stand it anymore. I finally went to the ER to get it drained, and the doctors there were not really happy with me when I told them that I left this try to go away with Epsom salt baths or my own wishful thinking.
For my stubbornness, I earned myself a staph infection and a very upset doctor who let me know in no uncertain terms that I brought this upon myself.
Llcucf80
38. Stocking Stones
I was this patient, lol. When I was 18, I went to the ER for chest pain. It was the most painful thing I had ever felt. Seriously, I felt like the guy from Alien. A few hours later, the ER doctor released me, telling me I had acid reflux and would be fine.
Over the next two years, this was a continuing problem. Once a month (and seriously, it was that predictable. First Saturday night of every month), I would get this terrible chest pain.
No amount of antacid medicine would help, from over-the-counter medications to prescriptions. I tried not eating that day, drinking milk, and sitting straight up all night, but nothing helped.
Finally, after I literally passed out from the pain one time in front of my mom, she convinced me to see a doctor again. The doctor (the first female doctor I had seen, by the way) sent me in for a gallbladder ultrasound on a hunch, and they discovered well over 100 stones in it.
Cue emergency surgery, a dumbfounded surgeon and a doctor amazed I had been passing gallstones for two years on the regular.
[deleted]
39. New Doctor
I remember being in pain for years. Ever since I was 16, I’ve had pain in my stomach that felt like someone was gripping my insides tightly.
My doctor kept telling me I was faking symptoms for pain meds, except I’ve never taken pain meds in my life. My stomach pains were period cramps, gas, or afterbirth contractions.
I go to the ER at the age of 21 in severe pain, and they give me an ultrasound. Tons of stones, including one stuck in the bile duct.
The tech asked why it took so long to get checked, to which I replied I’ve tried, but my doctor refused to because he thought I was faking. Long story short, that doctor doesn’t practice medicine anymore.
Beccavexed
40. Little Angel
When I was training to be a nurse, I got paired with a play specialist for a few weeks. A mum came into a and e with a little boy of about 4 or 5.
Doc requested we come and entertain/ distract the little man while he examined him and left it at that. He was happy, chatty, and a picture of health from the shoulders up. His belly, however, looked like he was expecting very soon.
This was a shock to both me and the other girl who had taken the usual toys (we had little baskets for each of us to take where needed).
We trailed this little guy while he had a multitude of tests, and he was extremely brave, letting the docs do what they had to. Mum was asked how long it had been going on, and she said three months.
He had a tumor, and the surgeons managed to remove it, but the poor kid was so embarrassed after surgery because he had saggy skin and stretch marks. He often plays on my mind, even more so since having a kid of my own. Hope he's doing OK now
MamaBear8414
41. Turned Difficult
Not a doctor but a medical physicist. About 12 years ago, I was asked to look at and give advice to a lady who had a very slow-growing tumor on their nose.
A Basel cell carcinoma. Usually, it is not much of an issue as if caught early, it can be cut off with surgery, and that's it, or a short course of radiotherapy.
It turns out this lady was quite vain, and as soon as the lump started to grow, she hid it under a scarf. She ended up hiding it for 20 years.
By the time any medical professional saw it, the tumor had taken over most of her nasal cavity, had crushed one eye, deformed her whole face, and grown in between all the nerves and blood vessels.
It was inoperable, and there was very little you could do with radiotherapy without doing a lot of damage to everything else. Such a shame, as it would have been so easy to fix 20 years ago. Please get lumps and random bleeding checked out.
PPENNYYY
42. The Selected Patient
Last term medical student here. For part of your surgical rotation, we had patients selected from the ER to be "student friendly" in regard to the symptoms they were seeing healthcare for.
An elderly man had a lump in his groin and was then selected to see me. Went in and talked to the patient as well as examined him. The lump had troubled him, putting on his pants for a couple of months.
He hadn't shown his wife or anyone else. I could instantly see that it wasn't a hernia as suspected, but a giant tumor with several lymphatic metastases found around 5. T-cell lymfoma it turned out.
I don't know if he lived or not. As students, we don't follow our patients for very long. I'll never forget that he'd come straight from work, had a badge with his picture on it, and looked like another person. It was like he was a husk of himself. His face was so skinny.
me_and_my_rancor
43. Hot As A Fire
I’m a nurse, and I am my own “Why didn’t you come in sooner!?” patient. I had a sore throat and didn’t think much of it; my daughter had come home from school with strep a few days before. I spiked a temp and let it ride.
My head hurt, and my neck began to get stiff. Now I’m thinking, “Oh crap, do I have meningitis??” The fever gets to 104, so I call my own doctor and explain the symptoms. They essentially tell me to wait until tomorrow morning.
I was like, “Okay, cool. I’ll take Advil and do that.” Well, throughout the night, my temperature spiked higher and higher. I don’t remember much of what happened, but I know that at some point, my ex-husband demanded that I call in with my newest temperature, which was above 105.
They still told me to ride it out at home, so in my brain-cooked state, I thought, “Yeah, okay.” Well, thank goodness, my ex got fed up at one point, and a fireman carried me to the car and drove me to the hospital where I’d just finished my ER internship.
My temp was still 106 or above, and my HR was a bit much. What I remember most vividly was my shock at my triage rating lol 2/5!
That’s what made heart attacks possible. All the nurses and techs just kept judging, shaking their heads at me like, “Duuuuuddee, you know these things! Why didn’t you come in sooner???”
LyannasLament
44. Neglected Illness
I am an EMT and have some pretty gnarly stories. One of the worst things I’ve seen (mostly because of the smell) is gangrene due to a lack of control over diabetes.
The call came in as extreme lower limb pain. We pull up on the scene. I examine the wound to see a man’s metatarsal exposed (yes, the bone).
And maggots were eating the wound. A long history of diabetes and, of course, did not do anything to control it. He eventually had his foot amputated.
The smell is something that has stuck with me and probably will forever. Just take care of yourself. Get help when you need it.
[deleted]
45. Missing Part
Not a doctor but a friend of the patient. For months, my friend had stomach pain, very sharp pains, that she ignored. She wasn’t eating real food anymore because anything she ate came up, so she was surviving on popsicles for months.
One day, she went with her sister to a fair. As they were walking from the parking spot to the fair with her three nieces, she twisted her ankle. She was in pain but ignored it.
She went to work the next day. And the next. A week later, her foot was swollen, and she could no longer stand at work. She works retail, and all she does is stand, so her manager made her leave so she could go to the hospital.
After being switched to several hospitals, they had it narrowed down to heart or kidney issues. Turns out, her kidneys had absolutely no function anymore. In fact, doctors could no longer find them on scans.
Now she’s waiting for a new kidney, she’s on dialysis, and I still have my best friend. Now she tells me when to go to the hospital and sent me so much help and support when I had COVID-19 earlier this year.
zephyrlilly