Medical Professionals Are Sharing 20 Patients Who Turned Out To Be Correct About Wild Self-Diagnoses

“We had a patient who came in insisting that her neighbor was poisoning her. Everyone dismissed her.”

by Julia Corrigan

BuzzFeed ContributorView All 98 Comments

The video player is currently playing an ad.Skip Ad

Recently, Reddit user Musikcookie took to the popular Ask Reddit page to ask doctors, “What was the wildest self-diagnoses a patient was actually right about?” Medical professionals of all types (and some patients, too) wrote in some truly wild answers. Here are some of the most fascinating:

1. “Patient here. I told my family GP (who I’d seen since I was a kid, and who worked with and saw both my parents as patients for years) that I thought I had reactive hypoglycemia.”

A person holds a glucose meter, indicating a focus on checking blood sugar levels. They are sitting on a knitted blanket

Filmstudio / Getty Images

“He scoffed. ‘You don’t have that. Why would you think you have that?’

I told him my symptoms. He was doubtful, but told the nurse to get me a Coke, and made me chug it. Sent me to roam around the hospital for a little bit, then get bloodwork and come back.

I came back, and his first words were ‘This is so aggravating.’

‘Does…that mean I have it?’

‘YES THAT MEANS YOU HAVE IT.'”

—u/chekhovsdickpic

2. “A woman in her 40s came in and told me she was having seizures. I asked how she knew, and she said her right hand would periodically stiffen.”

“There was no loss of consciousness or other symptoms more associated with classic seizures, but I ordered tests anyway.

Turns out she had been having multiple focal seizures.”

—u/darcydidwhat

3. “I work as a medical lab tech. We had a patient who came in insisting that her neighbor was poisoning her. Everyone dismissed her assuming she had some kind of paranoid psychosis.”

Smiling woman with short, wavy hair in an outdoor setting surrounded by people, wearing a patterned scarf and a dark coat

HBO / Via youtube.com

“She remained in the ER on a psych eval. I ran all the standard labs on her and they were normal, but this patient would not budge. She was admitted to psych on a hold.

At that point, one of the hospitalists said, ‘Why not?’ and ordered labs to test for several heavy metals and ethylene glycol. Her ethylene glycol level was 32. THIRTY TWO. I don’t know if she was legitimately being poisoned by her neighbor or if it was self-induced, but damn, that patient taught me a very important lesson that day.”

—u/Wrong_Character2279

4. “I’m a nurse, and just had a patient who came in for a colonoscopy due to constipation and pain with bowel movements. He told me prior to the test he felt like there was something ‘catching’ on the left side of his abdomen when he pooped.”

Person holding hands over face, looking surprised in a kitchen setting with plates on display in the background

Channel 4, BBC Two

“He was like, ‘Maybe I have a big polyp there or something.’ Sure enough, he ended up having a 2.5 cm polyp that we removed from that exact area.

I’ll never get to find out if that catching sensation ever went away for him, but I thought it was interesting that he was right.”

—u/madicoolcat

5. “I knew my partner had leukemia about a week before I could convince him to go to the doctor. He was bleeding and bruising really easily and had petechiae. I wanted to go to urgent care where I knew the CBC was done quickly onsite, but he instead wanted to wait to go to his primary care doctor.”

Illustration of various blood cells, including red blood cells and purple cells, representing a scientific concept or medical condition

Nemes Laszlo / Getty Images

“I took him to his primary and had a bag packed for the hospital in the trunk. The doctor told him it was likely a B-12 deficiency but that he’d do bloodwork to put my mind at ease anyway. I asked if the CBC was done onsite or not, and he said it was sent out.

I asked if he planned to rush the CBC. He got very angry and said, ‘There is nothing the CBC could show that would change my treatment plan.’ Then he told my partner he needed to stop me from googling.

We got a call that night from the lab that his white blood cell count was dangerously high and platelets were dangerously low, and I had to immediately take him to the ER. I did, and he was diagnosed with acute leukemia.”

—u/Psmpo

6. “I had a patient who came into the emergency department with vague mild abdominal pain whose friend had recently died of colon cancer. She was convinced she must have it too.”

“I told her cancer wasn’t contagious like that, but she was so insistent that I ordered a CT scan in order to reassure her. Lo and behold, she had a huge colon mass. Very bizarre case.”

—u/harrycrewe

7. “I’m a phone triage RN for a family practice. We had a woman in her early 60s, who we talked to often, call one time in a near panic attack, convinced she had terminal cancer.”

A healthcare professional in scrubs is talking on the phone in a medical setting, focused and attentive

Dragos Condrea / Getty Images

“Super nice lady, but high anxiety. Really not in terrible health otherwise. She wasn’t even feeling unwell and had the vaguest set of symptoms.

I scheduled her the same day with her PCP, who ordered a CT of her abdomen to hopefully help alleviate her concerns… Nope. Metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was dead within 6 weeks. I’ll never forget taking her initial call and trying to calm her down.”

—u/Wobbly_Joe

8. “‘I’m going to die’ — a spot-on diagnosis from a woman right before she went into cardiac arrest. That was eerie.”

Person in a denim shirt holds their chest with one hand and their stomach with the other, appearing to be in discomfort

Kinga Krzeminska / Getty Images

—u/davetheweeb

“[I’m a] lowly EMT, but they tell us this is a common sign of cardiac arrest. ‘Sense of dread,’ our book says.”

—u/LiveConstant3548

9. “[This is about me as a] patient, but I work in healthcare. I had pain in my right leg, specifically my glute. It progressed to lightning-like pain down my leg, pins and needles. I assumed I had fluid or a mass crushing my sciatic nerve, and after a week of rapidly increasing pain, assumed it was an abscess.”

Medical illustration showing the sciatic nerve in the lower back, pelvis, and leg, highlighting its path and connection to the spine

Nathan Devery / Getty Images

“So I started feeling septic. Went to the ER, and they refused me and sent me up to the primary ward. They immediately sent me back down to the ER and ordered a CT —lo and behold, I had 500 mL abscess under my muscle crushing the nerves in my right leg.”

“Before my second surgery, my specialist refused to believe they drained that much from me, and I had to show photos as proof. He said and I quote, ‘If there had been that much you’d be in the Guinness Book of World Records.'”

Person with hair tied back wearing a button-up shirt is looking down, seated in a kitchen setting

Person drinking from a white cup in a kitchen, wearing a casual white shirt

“He called in other doctors and nurses to review my photos and case afterward. “

—u/Kit-the-cat

10. “Not the patient himself, but his mom. This child was 18 months old and was admitted due to constipation. We were giving him medicines for that and it was getting better but the mom started to insist we get an MRI of his brain.”

X-ray images showing multiple views of a human skull from different angles

Pinkforest / Getty Images

“We refused at first because we did not thin

…

[Message clipped] View entire message

Attachments area

Preview YouTube video Selina Meyer’s Best Moments | Veep | Max

Selina Meyer’s Best Moments | Veep | Max